A Critical Analysis of 34Th Street Murals, Gainesville, Florida

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2005 A Critical Analysis of the 34th Street Wall, Gainesville, Florida Lilly Katherine Lane

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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS AND DANCE

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE 34TH STREET WALL, GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA

LILLY KATHERINE LANE

A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Art Education in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2005

The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Lilly Katherine Lane defended on July 11, 2005

______Tom L. Anderson Professor Directing Dissertation

______Gary W. Peterson Outside Committee Member

______Dave Gussak Committee Member

______Penelope Orr Committee Member

Approved:

______Marcia Rosal Chairperson, Department of Art Education

______Sally McRorie Dean, Department of Art Education

The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members.

ii TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables ..…………...... v List of Figures ...... …………………..……...... vi Abstract …………………...……………………………………………………………..….. ix

INTRODUCTION .…………………………………………..…………………....…...... 1 Problem Statement ………………………………………………………...... 2 Art Criticism in Context ………………………………………………...... 2 Scope and Limitation ....………………………………….....……………...... ……. 3 Definition of Terms ………………………………………………………...... 3 Introduction to The 34th Street Wall ....………………………………………...... 4 Methodology ...... 5 Sources ………………………………………………………………...... … 5 Contextualism …………………………………………………………...... 7 Semiotics ...... 8 Structuralism ……………………………………………………………...... 9 Deconstruction . ……………………...... 10 Social Construction ...... 11 Contextual Analysis of The 34th Street Wall Through Surveying Observers . 12 REVIEW OF LITERATURE The Nature of Public Art ...... 14 History of Murals and Graffiti Art …………………………………………...……... 18 Australia ……………………………………………………………...……... 19 Europe .………..……...... 20 Sub Saharan Africa ...………………………………………………………. 24 Egypt ...... 26 India ...... 28 China and Tibet ...... 29 Central and South America .…...... 33 Mexico ...... 35

iii United States ...... 37 CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION The Murals of Gainesville, Florida ...... 63 Description and Analysis of The 34th Street Wall ………………………..... 72 INTERPRETATION, CONCLUSIONS, IMPLICATIONS, AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH Interpretation Part 1 ...... 103 . Interpretation Part 2 ...... 109 Conclusions ...... 117 Implications ...... 123 Educational Implications ...... 124 Suggestions for Further Research …………………………………………... 125 APPENDIX A. Senate Bill No. 444 …….....………...... ……………………………….... 128 B. Human Subjects Approval …..…………..……………………...... 130 C. Informed Consent ……………….…………..……………...... 131 END NOTES ...... 132 REFERENCES ...... 134 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 151

LIST OF TABLES

1. Distribution of Colors ………………………………………………………………... 74 2. Variations of Content ………………………………………………………………… 75 3. Multiple Panel Designs ……………………………………………………………… 84 4. Duration of Stay …………………………………………………………………….... 86 5. Survey Question Results ……………………………………………………………... 109 6. Participants Profiles ………………………………………………………………….. 109

LIST OF FIGURES

1. Cave Paintings ...... 19

2. Lascaux Cave ………………………………………………………………………...... 22

3. Herdsman and Cattle at Tin Tazarift, Tassili. The lower cow wears a collar around its neck and has a forked object in its mouth. Figures ca 6 to 14 inches in height ...... 25

4. Wall mural in tomb, Hierakonopolis ...... 27

5. Saddanta Jātaka: The Queen Fainting at the Sight of Tusks. Drawing of fresco. Cave 10, Ajant, India. ndhra period, first century C.E...... 28

6. Dunhuang cave shrine …………………………………………………………………... 30

7. Mural in the tomb of Prince Yi De, 706 C.E. …………………………………………… 30

8. Detail of an animal on a throne-back. The central painting shows a seated white Avalokitesvara, 1270-1368...... 31

9. The Yin and Yang, symbol of creation ………………………………………………...... 31

10. Mural with mythical animals, Teotihuacán ……………………………………………… 33

11. Mural, Chichén Itzá ……………………………………………………………………… 34

12. Kuau Kiva mural ………………………………………………………………………… 38

13. Crow Lodge of Twenty-five Buffalo Skins, George Catlin, 1832-33, 61 x 74 cm. The lodge was owned by the women, but the painting shows exploits of the husband …………………………………………………...... 40

14. Ascension mural, John Biggers, 1988 ...... 43

15.Hand Signs from the 79 Family Swans Bloods, gang graffiti, 1996, Los Angeles …….... 46

vi 16. Unite to End Police Brutality, political graffiti, 1973, Livingston College, Piscataway, NJ ………………………………………………………………………. 47

17. Tags, STAY HIGH 149, LEE 163, PHASE 2, VINNY, ROTO, CA, FUTURA 2000, AJ 161, FUZZ, and TAKI 183, 1970s, New York City ...... 48

18. Throw-Up, SE 3, New York City ………………………………………………………. 50

19. Piece graffiti, 1998, New York City ...... 50

20. Dick Tracy, Production Piece, Caine 1, 1995, Los Angeles, CA …………………...... 51

21. Complex 3-D Style, SKET BLT, 2000, New Haven, CT ...... 51

22. Straight Letter Style, CES, 1998, Los Angeles, CA ...... 52

23. Creeper Style, SIX PACK (GHOST) and SANE, 1999, New York City ...... 52

24. Bubble Letter Style, SUROC, 1998, Philadelphia, PA ...... 52

25. Wild Style, VFRFresh, 1993, New York City ………………………………………...... 53

26. Loki, HESH, MILK, and DAIM, 1992, Hamburg, Germany .……………………....….... 56

27. Pensamientos Indigenas, 1985, Coco, 72 x 56 inches, aerosol on canvas ……………... 57

28. Gajin Fujita, Los Angeles, 2001 …………………………………………….…………... 58

29. Motley Crue, 2004, Gajin, acrylic and gold leaf on six wood panels ………………….. 58

30. City Sanctuary ...... 60

31. 1995, Atlanta, GA …………………………………………………………………...... 61

32. Cave Art, Gary Larson ...... 61

33. The 34th Street Wall, Gainesville, FL ...... 72

34. Throw-ups on The 34th Street Wall ...... 76

35. Gabe Lacktman .………………………………………………………………………... 77

36. Panels #36, #37, and #38, June 13, 1998 ...... 78, 80, 81

37. Panels #15, #16, and #17, July 16, 1999 ...... 85

vii 38. Birthday panels, 34th Street Wall, Gainesville, FL ...... 87

39. Military panels, 34th Street Wall, Gainesville, FL …………………………………… ... 88

40. Panels #13 and #14, February 27, 1999 ……………………………………………...... 90

41. Panel #10, March 12, 1999 …………………………………………………………...... 91

42. Panel #4, August 27, 1999 ...... 91

43. St. Patrick’s Catholic School 8th grade school art project ...... 93

44. Panel #24, January 9, 1999 ...... 94

45. Panel #32, May 16, 1998 ...... 96

46. Panel #18, August 6, 1998 ...... 96

47. Panel #25 and #26, Eid Mubarak, January 23, 1999 ...... 98

48. Nazi political graffiti, April 23, 1999 ...... 99

49. Panel #20, June 6, 1998 ...... 101

50. Results of blended spray paint and mixing tool ...... 107

51. Panel #24, July 30, 1999 ...... 112

52. Jake Fuller cartoon ...... 115

viii

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on understanding the meaning and significance gleaned from a twenty six month examination of the murals on The 34th Street Wall, Gainesville, Florida, in its local and the larger general context. The Feldman method (1994) of critical analysis was used to interpret the murals. The supporting investigation included defining the local multicultural structure and a review of the historiography of those origins.

The earliest examples of murals were the animals, hunting scenes, fertility symbols, and mystical realms of religion on the walls of caves and the surfaces of Paleolithic rocks (Dissanayke, 1992). The art of the ancient world was inseparable from religion and without it would probably have found little inspiration. These images represented a need not only to exist within our environments, but to impose ourselves indelibly into them. The society in which we live was here before us; it will be here after we are gone. The small intimate groups within which we function are but a part of the larger society of human beings; the world is the landscape. Important to our understanding of current multicultural American murals and their contexts, and in particular The 34th Street Wall murals, is the knowledge of murals throughout the world. Rapid global communications expose us to a myriad of images, symbols, and ideas. Air travel and computers have changed the world. Being in closer contact gives us the opportunity for the exchange of ideas, some which may be understood at varying levels within the parameters of our knowledge, within our own culture and experience. The murals on the walls and the caves of Australia, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas may contain underlying concepts and images we may use to help us understand The 34th Street Wall.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

This study focuses on understanding the meaning and significance gleaned from a twenty- six month examination of the murals on The 34th Street Wall, Gainesville, Florida, in its local and the larger general context. The Feldman method (1994) of critical analysis was used to interpret the murals. The supporting investigation included defining the local multicultural structure and a review of the historiography of those origins.

concepts and images we may use to help us understand The 34th Street Wall. As Joseph Campbell (1988) stated,

Neither in body nor in mind do we inhabit the world of those hunting races of the Paleolithic millennia, to whose lives and life ways we nevertheless owe the very forms of our bodies and structures of our minds. Memories of their animal envoys still must sleep, somehow, within us; for they wake a little and stir when we venture into wilderness. And again they wake, with a sense of recognition, when we enter any one of those great painted caves. (p. 72)

Problem Statement

What are the themes portrayed and what is the relationship of the murals on The 34th Street Wall in Gainesville, Florida, between early 1998 and early 2000 to social, religious, and political influences of the people portrayed or affected?

Art Criticism in Context

The purpose of this art criticism is to learn and to understand the art in its authentic context. The strategies employed are critique of the murals by the author and when possible interviews of artists and observers of The Wall. Included within the supporting research is the history of murals worldwide, their multicultural influence on local graffiti art, and how this is translated within the current educational context.

Scope and Limitations

This study records the graffiti art on one specific site in Gainesville, Florida, over a twenty-six-month period, 1998-2000. These data provide information, which sheds light on one site, and possibly by natural generalization on the current state of contemporary American graffiti art (Eisner,1998). This site-specific multidimensional approach may also provide data with which to address future research, including graffiti art’s relationship with other current art forms. The scope of investigation for this research is limited in its geographical scope and time frame; brevity dictates a narrowing of parameters to this scope.

Definition of Terms

The following terms will be useful in describing and explaining the philosophical foundations of this study.

Contextualism -- The method of art history used to define art as a mixture of religion, philosophy, economics, and within a specific area and time frame (Feldman, 1994, p.16). Anderson believed the context in which the art was created and utilized determined its meaning and value (1983). Semiotics ------The method by which analysis defines art as pragmatic (useful) syntactic (formal), and semantic (meaningful) (Feldman, 1994, p.17). Structuralism --- A linguistic theory explaining what makes art meaningful as opposed to what individual works of art means (Feldman, 1994, p.17). Deconstruction --Interpretation and definition of individual art works by the critic in lieu of the artist - valuable because it allows for different, conflicting meaning within one entity (Feldman, 1994, pp.17-18). Social Construction of Meaning ----"Term referring, to the idea that understanding of things in the world is constructed by groups of people - societies - rather than being given and predetermined" (Anderson and Milbrandt, 2005, p. 237).

Introduction to The Wall

Local murals and graffiti in Gainesville, Florida, have been painted by a wide range of individuals, from rank amateurs to professionally trained artists. Numerous surfaces, both public and private, are decorated with large murals, usually covering the entire side of a building, or a highway overpass. These murals abound in a variety of settings, and offer the community an opportunity to view the diversity of the artists' expression. The Gainesville area continues to be a vibrant, ever-changing community. Every year the influx of new students renews the large pool of possible talent. The areas where graffiti art currently exist invite serious (as well as occasional) artists to express themselves. Local newspapers provide a continuing record of the art on the local walls. Several murals are often referred to as “city cultural landmarks,” the “city’s corkboard” and “city scrapbooks” by the local media (Martin, 1998). Diana Moskovitz reported that painting on The 34th Street Wall was considered a privilege to students and members of the community. It is a part of Gainesville life (2001). Throughout its history, The 34th Street Wall has continued to maintain a magnetic attraction for local, as well as visiting graffiti artists. Courtney Harris reported that visiting artists appear to have common reasons for traveling to Gainesville in order to display their artistic talents on The Wall (2000). The most common are the hip-hop graffiti artists with their sketchbooks (Piece Books) filled with numerous pre-planned compositions (L. K. Lane, personal communication, March 30, 1998). Annie Pais reported the most impressive groups of graffiti artists to paint on The Wall were the European Crews (1998). The European Crews are loosely knit groups of artists meeting together to paint as a crew. Each crew did not have a specific name and consisted of different artists for each event. The Wall, which serves the community as a creative outlet, is known for its role as a venue for impermanent art in a public place as well as its role as a site for tribute memorial. By far, the We Remember panel - a local reaction to the horrific murder of five students in late August 1990 has garnered the most attention and news coverage. It is questionable if the graffiti art on The Wall is readily deciphered and understood by the viewing public, especially university students. Controversy arises because the wall serves as a community mirror through which each person sees a particular reality. To some viewers the

creative process appears to be of more importance than the content. Local artist William Schaaf (2001) observed,

The daily changes, the confluence and diversity of energy enlivens the wall with an on-going force (of nature) of human affirmation. . . . And by the way, it’s all about the energy; the expression of ideas through a long established form. . . . Many regard the wall as a bastion of free expression. And some began to see it as something like holy ground after one panel of the wall was used as a memorial to the five college students killed in 1990 by Danny Rollings ( 2001, p. 1).

Painting on The Wall provides an important outlet for many young people in the community. Its ever-changing state represents a small sector of the population who choose to paint The Wall what is going on at the core of this small university city. Another benefit is the

decrease of graffiti around the city (Brown, 2001).

Methodology

Sources

To critically analyze the murals on The 34th Street Wall in Gainesville, Florida, the Feldman (1994) method has been utilized. Feldman’s critical process included naming and describing the facts, analyzing the facts, interpreting the evidence, and judging the works of art. In this, the information-gathering phase of art criticism is very important. Feldman placed the naming and describing of facts as the initial component of information gathering (1994). This information is quite similar to that found on museum labels – artist’s name, country of origin, medium, date of work, size, and title. Description also uses the language of line (straight, curved), shape (circular, square, triangle), color (red, green), and texture (smooth, rough). Yet, as Langer observed, “The different emotional values ascribed to a work of art lie on a more intellectual plane than its essential import: for what a work of art sets forth – the course of

sentience, feeling, emotion, and the élan vital itself – has no counterpart in any vocabulary” (1953, p. 174). Feldman’s second critical process, analyzing the relationships of the parts of a work, was “dealing with visual evidence” (1994, p. 28). This is a more advanced form of description with a suggested language. The grammar of this language included a “combination of formal elements – line, light, shape, color, and texture” (p. 28). Analyzing is in essence the interpreting of the elements isolated in the first stage. The third stage of Feldman’s critical process is interpreting the evidence. A good interpretation will have many of the following: completeness, persuasiveness, personal relevance, durability, emotional power, intellectual force, insight, visual responsiveness, and originality. This stage is composed of the interpretation itself. The interpretation creates meaning, tells a story (1994). Anderson deemed interpretation to be as the most important point in critical analysis (1993). Parsons and Blocker (1993) defined the extreme options of interpretation. One view is to observe only the visual qualities without the context. The other extreme is to connect the visual elements with its cultural background. Parsons and Blocker observed,

Unless we make some connections with the art and interest of our times, and place the culturally different somehow within the orbit of our perspective and concerns, we cannot talk to each other about it. More important, perhaps, we could learn nothing from it. . . . a partial understanding has a definite value; one’s total perspective grows as one comes to understand a work from another culture. The viewer's categories do not just change to become like those of the original audience; rather they grow to include them (p. 47).

The final stage of Feldman’s critical process is evaluation, or judging works of art. This consists of comparing works belonging in the same art classification. He stated that it is best to classify by meaning and purpose in order to establish similarity of purpose before comparative judgment. This entails comparing the value of art in relation to other works of art. His categories for judging were formalism, expressivism, and instrumentalism. Formalism consists of the belief

in the analysis of form rather than content. The formalist is able to understand the art because they possess the same sensitivities as the artist. This tends to foster the idea that they think alike, have similar educations and status in society – elitism. Expressivism is Feldman’s term meaning non-formalism. Expressivism does not separate “intellectual and moral values from aesthetic values” (1994, p. 40). Expressivism is about expression through form. Instrumentalism is the factor deciding if the work is good and serves the institution it represents. Feldman felt this final stage of evaluation actually could be omitted. Kaelin in An Aesthetics for Art Educators considered Feldman’s last stage “confusing” (1989, p. 185). Anderson proposed differing criteria “in terms of the internal integrity of each mural as the content and form seem to reflect the social, psychological, and aesthetic milieu from which they arise” (1983, p. 16). Anderson did not believe in accidents of form or content in murals. Arnheim (1974) summarized, “No longer can we consider what the artist does to be a self-contained activity, mysteriously inspired from above, unrelated and unrelatable to other human activities . . . . the artist’s conceiving is an instrument of life, a refined way of understanding who and where we are” (p. 5). In order to accomplish the critical analysis of The 34th Street Wall murals, four of Feldman’s critical strategies were used: contextualism, semiotics, structuralism, and deconstruction. The artistic effort found in The Wall murals has been studied in the context of its social significance, as well as, its aesthetic merit in an attempt to establish its meaning within a historiographical and cultural context, and to place it in a larger, continuous historical tradition.

Contextualism

Feldman considered contextualism “the principal method of art-historical explanation” (1994, p. 16). This included a consideration of religion, philosophy, politics, and economics within a specific area and time frame. Anderson demonstrated the importance of art-historical explanation through historiography with his succinct search for influences impacting the murals of the United States from 1700 to 1983 (1983). This research expands the scope and time factor of influences on the murals in addressing The 34th Street Wall. Historiography is the writing of history. This includes the researching, recording, and analyzing of the data collected. The principal objective of art history has been the “linking of

objects to patterns of causality assumed to exist between objects and makers, objects and objects, and between all of them and their various contemporary contexts” (Preziosi, 1998, p. 17). Murals are a visually expressive communication between artists and the viewers. As oral communication, language, within a culture has a symbolic function, so does visual communication, art, portrayed within that culture. The rules of these systems are learned by those living within a given culture or those exposed to these cultures. Knowledge of the traditions of a culture, as described by Dewey, is necessary to be able to form an opinion in order to critically analyze the art. This exposure has been greatly accelerated through rapid advances in global communication (1934). Parsons and Blocker observed it could become problematic if too many of the rules of these systems are altered by the artist. The approach in this study interpreted murals from a traditional perspective (1993). Within this perspective the analysis of the murals on The 34th Street Wall has included these contextual criteria. This has provided an external platform on which to examine the murals by scrutinizing local, state, national, and international records, publications, and other data, in order to understand and recognize what is being said, by whom, and why.

Semiotics

Semiotics was Feldman's second critical approach (1994). Feldman listed three classifications – pragmatic (useful), syntactic (formal), and semantic (meaningful). Semiotics “focuses on the codes or conventions that govern the inherent meanings and cultural interpretations of artworks” (p. 17). Childers and Hentzi defined semiotics as signs and the ways they produce meanings (1995). The work of Pierce (1839-1914) was the genesis of the term semiotics. He posited the belief that signs were a system and a branch of logic. He based his three types of signs on “the relationship between the thing signifying and that which it signifies” (p. 272). The three types included the icon, the index and the symbol. The influence of semiotics was greatly expanded by Saussure (1916) and later structuralism in the 1960s. Fernie defined semiotics as “structuralism applied to signs instead of language” (1995, p. 359). Fernie’s three categories included – iconic (the sign is a picture of the object), indexical (the sign is related by association, i.e., lightning with speed), and symbolic (the sign is

conventional). Semiotics is akin to the use of iconography to interpret the visual symbols within a culture (Feldman, 1994). Gombrick stated the study of iconography “is to art criticism what linguistics is to the criticism of literature” (1994, p. 11). The information on or about semiotics is enormous. Preziosi cited an extensive bibliography in The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology (1998). Semiotics was utilized in the analysis of The 34th Street Wall murals primarily through iconography, the study of the meaning of symbols. Within the multicultural population of this area there may be differing meanings or connotations of an image or words painted on The 34th Street Wall.

Structuralism

The third critical approach described by Feldman was structuralism - a linguistic theory explaining what art means as opposed to what an each individual artwork means. Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), the Swiss linguist, developed the foundations of structuralism, the “theory of language as based on a system of differences rather than resemblances or similarities” (Childers and Hentzi, 1995, p. 286). Fernie stated structuralism “looks for meaning at a level below that of surface content . . . using paired concepts . . . to define and explore the content” (1995, p. 19). Structuralism analyzes ideologies, cultures, and systems. Its value is anthropological and sociological. The differing ideologies on structuralism include that of Piaget (1970) and Chomsky (1963-5) who shared with Freud (Sarason, 1990) the belief that important aspects of the mind lie beneath the surface. Piaget believed that the brain/mind is a blank slate, while Chomsky thought it was not blank but ready to be programmed. Lévi-Strauss’ philosophy was essentially the idea that if two humans in far away places have the same need and the same material they will independently create the same object (1969). Cassirer’s contribution was that difference between scientific and artistic thinking were more developed (1945). Langer’s basic idea was that humans had the need to symbolize, invent meanings, and to invest meanings in one’s world ((1942). Goodman’s philosophy was that art was built upon a recognition of types of symbols and how they function (1978). Gardner observed structuralism’s approach to the mind as limited, such as “one’s special feature of human thought – its ability to create and sponsor commerce through the use of various

kinds of symbol systems. These symbol systems (codes of meaning) are the vehicles through which thought takes place – naturally creative, open systems. Able to create, revise, transform, and recreate fresh products system and worlds of meaning” (1982, p. 4). Gardner (1982) concluded that an amalgam of “all these structural beliefs is the key to physiological and psychological investigations of human symbolic activity” (p. 39), content ". . . . using paired concepts . . . to define and explore the content” (p. 19). Structuralism analyzes ideologies, cultures, and systems. Its value is anthropological and sociological. When analyzing The 34th Street Wall murals, it became necessary to define the ideologies, cultures and systems of many multicultural images in order to explain what makes the art meaningful.

Deconstruction

Feldman’s fourth critical approach, deconstruction, is “a type of post-structuralism . . .. [that] reads or interprets individual artworks” (1994, p. 17). Feldman valued deconstruction for its openness to conflicting meanings in an artwork. The critic defines the work, not the artist - “the meaning of the work changes according to the critic’s needs, and no final or authoritative reading is possible” (p. 17). Cuddon (1991) stated, deconstruction was clarified by Barbara Johnson in The Critical Difference (1981),

Deconstruction is not synonymous with ‘destruction’, however, it is in fact much closer to the original meaning of the word ‘analysis’ itself, which etymologically means ‘to undo’ – a virtual synonym for ‘to de-construct’. The deconstruction of a text does not proceed by random doubt or arbitrary subversion, but by the care teasing out of warring forces of signification within the text itself [my italics]. If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it is not the text, but the claim to unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying over another. A deconstructive reading is a reading that analyses the specificity of a text’s critical difference from itself. (p. 222)

Childers and Hentzi (1995) referred to Derrida’s 1970s essays as the source for the term deconstruction. Arnheim observed “No one particular style is art’s final climax. Every style is but one valid way of looking at the world, one view of the holy mountain, which offers a different image from every place but can be seen as the same everywhere” (1974, p. 461). Utilizing deconstruction as a tool for analyzing The 34th Street Wall murals has been ambiguous at best. Numerous aspects of The Wall have been discussed and debated within the Gainesville, Florida, area - ownership, the legality of the act of painting on The Wall, and the artistic value of the painting.

Social Construction

Social construction consists of multiple views, not one predetermined absolute truth. Enlarging the scope of study has allowed students to explore much wider avenues of their society. The Social Construction of Reality (1966) by Berger and Luckman was the first book using the term social construction in its title. This term is now accepted within the mainstream of the social sciences. Social construction affords the opportunity to recognize how the invisible boundaries of society developed, were altered, then institutionalized, and finally how these are transmitted to the next generation. Gusfield noted "Conflict with others and the resulting cooperation and common struggle often provide experiences from which an aggregate of people develop a sense of themselves as. . . . belonging to a common group" (1973, p. 36). Cohen explained the word “community” is a symbolic boundary enclosing a loose class of people. These symbols may be language, flags, or dances (1985). Hughes (2000) observed, “Social constructivists emphasize that society does not exist independently of the people who make it up. History, tradition and the sense of community identity are actively written or created by members of society, in the present to meet current social needs” (p. 1). Hughes continued “A symbol is held in common by all the members, but its meaning varies within its members unique orientation to it. People construct community symbolically, making community a resource and repository of meaning, and a point of reference for their social identity” (p. 69). A symbol, within this concept of social construction, found on The 34th Street Wall of interest is the swastika/fylfot1. This symbol, when painted on any surface, results in immediate

reactions from local viewers. Swain described the attitude toward the swastika, “The counterclockwise swastika was widely used among the Indians of North and South America. The clockwise swastika was adopted in 1933 as the symbol of the National Socialist party of Germany. As such it came to be one of the most hated symbols in the history of man. It came to stand for the evil associated with the Nazis as they gained control of Europe before and during World War II. After the Allies defeated Germany in 1945, they banned the display of the swastika emblem” (1964, p. 815).

Contextual Analysis of The 34th Street Wall Through Surveying Observers

The inquiry into The 34th Street Wall murals presented numerous questions. Who are the people painting on The Wall? How often do they paint The Wall and how far do they come in order to paint The Wall? Are they “scribblers” or serious artists? What do they paint? Would they count the experience of painting on The Wall as one of their treasured memories? Did they take a photograph of their work to celebrate or validate the event? Did they know the historical background of the swastika painted on The Wall? Answering this question is a contextual aspect of getting at the content of The Wall. Thirty subjects, twenty females and ten males, were surveyed about The Wall. Subjects completed a survey designed to measure the community’s response to the graffiti art on The 34th Street Wall, Gainesville, Florida. These subjects were in a variety of scenarios - waiting at the music academy, bank, physician's office, and library; they were a diverse group of neighbors, friends, and relatives. Biographical data on the subjects included age, sex, education level, occupation, and ethnic group. Thirteen questions queried the subject’s response to differing aspects of the graffiti art on The Wall (Survey Questionnaire, Appendix A). Risks involved are reasonable in relation to anticipated benefits of the research, if any, to the subjects and the importance of the knowledge that may reasonably be expected to result. The informed consent form was read by the thirty subjects and signed. Between February 8, 1998 and March 24, 2000, the forty-six panels of The Thirty-fourth Street Wall, Gainesville, Florida, were photographed weekly. During these 110 consecutive weeks there was the potential for a total of 5,060 photographs. This projected total was decreased due to my prior commitments and mishaps during the photography process. This resulted in a

total of 4804 photos of panels to be analyzed. Each photograph was dated, numbered, and filed. Panels were numbered 1 – 46 from the north end to south end. The information compiled from each panel included: color, content, length of time on The Wall before being over-painted, and the number of images requiring multiple panels. Presently published data on the colors, the longevity, and the content of the images in any specific site over an extended time have not been available. In the search for a truly comprehensive analysis it was deemed of importance to me to collect data covering an extended time – at least two to five years. The final time frame for data collection was two years and two months. I am analyzing The 34th Street Wall in Gainesville, Florida utilizing strategies developed by Feldman (1994). These consist of description and analysis of The Wall, contextual analysis which includes background information and survey responses by observers (Anderson and Wilbrandt, 2005), evaluation, and thematics (Eisner,1998).

CHAPTER 2

Review of Literature

The Nature of Public Art Public art includes the making and placing of art outside of conventional art spaces. This may include murals and sculpture performances. In 1997 Malcolm Miles, Chelsea College of Art and Design, described public art as follows,

Having little appeal to curators, dealers and critics for whom it lacks the autonomy of modernist and contemporary art and offers few opportunities for the manufacture of reputations, accumulation of profit or demonstration of taste; yet advocacy for public art supported by the Arts Councils and National Endowment for the Arts, has been successful, and it is commonplace to include provision for art in urban development in the cities of the industrialized states of the west. Since this advocacy has been unquestioning of the intentions of development and its impact on communities, art has perhaps been complicit in the abjection that increasingly follows development and the extension of privatization and surveillance. (p. 1)

Exploring public art requires the overlapping and integration of numerous issues. These issues are in such divergent fields of study that a researcher must be somewhat discriminating in the selection of reference sources. Publications about the art of museums and galleries have by far out-distanced those of public art. Malcolm Miles (1997) in Art Space and the City – Public

Art and Urban Futures, has enumerated and discussed, beginning in 1967, a rather wide range of publications on the public art in England and the United States. The scope of the investigation for this research cannot be limited to these two areas, regardless of their geographical size or abundance of published material in comparison to other undeveloped countries where there has been a long, ancient history of graffiti art. Mural and graffiti art literature encompasses a wide range of publications – from the ancient Chinese and Indian to the current Cuban and Swedish. Most often the ancient graffiti art is found tucked away at the bottom of the page, under a photograph, or at the end of a chapter. This has been, by far, the more difficult to find. It does not appear to be the same with current graffiti art. Harriet Senie and Sally Webster (1992) remind us in Critical Issues in Public Art – Content, Context, and Controversy,

For any meaningful understanding of public art as an expression culture or intellectual achievement, it must be viewed in the complex matrix in which it is conceived, commissioned, built and, finally, received. Much more is required than an aesthetic analysis of the works, although the value of public art as art should not be ignored. (p. xi)

Public art is to be found in many forms and serves multiple agendas. John Dewey (1934) informed us that works of art are close to our daily lives, and enjoying them “reveals signs of a unified collective life” (p. 81). Possibly the most prolific public art form is graffiti art. Graffiti art is an inexpensive medium, interchangeable moment to moment, moving through time and place, through culture and politics; it runs the gamut from the statement “I was Here” to statements of political affiliations, group relationships and communal identity. The most visible predominant graffiti art forms in the United States developed in urban areas. Phillips (1999) observed gang members using graffiti art to circumscribe systems, territories, and neighborhoods, as well as identify friends and enemies. “Graffiti takes gang members from ideology to experience in a manner that grounds their thoughts and feelings into concrete, well-written realities” (p. 22). Webster’s New World Dictionary (1956) defined graffiti as inscriptions or drawings scratched on pillars, buildings, etc. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1909) defined graffiti as “a class

of rude inscriptions scratched on the walls of ancient monuments, generally sepulchral, as distinguished from the formal inscriptions engraved on the tombs of the deceased.” The etymology of the word graffiti includes two categories: judgmental and non- judgmental. According to Phillips (1999) the judgmental terms of countries (Armenia, Bengali, Chinese, Korean, and Maori) are in stark contrast to one another, “graffiti are dirty, disgusting pollutants that carry a risk of impurity; that they are immature scribblings made without meaning or purpose; that they are thoughtless and childlike” (p. 15). Non-judgmental words include “writing on the wall” (Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, and Mongolian) and a form of the Italian “griffito.” These terms may well have a differing connotation within a native culture, but do not translate as judgmental. Other languages (Dutch, German, and Russian) defined graffiti in terms of their medium or place. Allen Walker Read (1977) described graffiti as autochthonous, meaning as formed or originating in the place where found. There are numerous ways to examine graffiti art and its place in society – psychological, historical, social, and art historical. Allen Walker Read (1977) and Alan Dundes (1966) were folklorists and anthropologists; each coined terms for the graffiti art he studied. Read was one of the earlier writers on the broader psychological issues of wall graffiti. He collected the folk writings of travelers while on a road trip across the United States in 1928 and used the term “folk epigraphy” to refer to these folk writings. The main point of his Classic Graffiti (1977) was that graffiti represented written versions of things that usually survive only in oral speech. He focused on the use of taboo words – mainly obscenities not recorded in common dictionaries of the time. Dundes’ term “latrinalia,” referred to bathroom wall graffiti. Dundes (1966) contended that anthropologists must initiate their studies locally, where research might be driven by simple studies and research might be driven by simple exoticism. Ben Lomas (1973) in Graffiti: Some Observations & Speculation in Psychoanalysis Review commented,

It is my view that the meaning of wall writing cannot be gleaned solely from messages themselves, for like dreams, jokes, and slips of the tongue, graffiti not easily betray their meaning. Indeed, we would be lost in our attempt to understand them if we relied too heavily on their content. We can no more understand graffiti by separating them from the walls on which

they appear than we can fully understand dreams by neglecting their obvious connection with sleep or comprehend jokes by ignoring the laughter they produce in the listener. It is this relation of the writer to the wall that holds the key to our investigation. (p. 88)

Particular aspects of graffiti art appear to remain constant across time and national boundaries: identifying individuals, referencing love and hate, and expressing fundamental beliefs. Lacking neutrality, graffiti art is supercharged with sentiment and forces interacting between graffiti artists and the larger viewing society. Graffiti art is an abstraction in writing, fibrous and hard; it is separate from the people at the same time as it is the people. In his essay The Author as Producer, Walter Benjamin (1979) encouraged scholars to view works of art and literature as active parts of social reality; stating we must not just ask what a work represents but what role that work plays in social production. The diversity of graffiti research and approaches indicates its depth as a topic for study. Phillips (1999) stated,

As a medium of communication, graffiti lies somewhere between art and Language. Words become signifiers, solutions, and slogans; that is, they cease to be individual words but become symbols and images, which communicate a variety of levels. These word images are laden with the visual modifiers of style, color, placement, and form. As much as the content of the writings, these modifiers may radically change the meaning, presentation, and effectiveness of a message. (p. 39)

Sociologist Lyman Chafee distinguished between the traditions of political graffiti and wall painting in Buenos Aires. He wrote that graffiti art is more often a spontaneous effort with an aerosol can on an unprepared surface, while murals are created carefully with paint and brush on prepared backgrounds (1989). Robert Reisner stated that true graffiti retains a timelessness linked to the excitement of never knowing how long it will last (1971). The difference between graffiti and murals helps to explain the nature of graffiti as a particular mode of usual communication when we recognize that murals are primarily image- based and rooted in non-literate pictorial traditions. Graffiti art is primarily word-based, having

roots in literacy. As a medium that combines language and art, graffiti art is an art of the word. Its etymology relates to writing, ‘graph’ refers to pencil and writing media. John Bushnell (1990) pointed out in his Moscow Graffiti, “I was much slower than I ought to have been to realize that the graffiti functioned as a language – not as a generic sign system but as a real language . . .” (p. xi).

While these diverse authors serve as a source of data upon which to elaborate broader psychological and sociological issues, the Internet offers an array of graffiti-related Web sites. Noodle Links (2002) has an extensive database of academic bibliographies. On this site typing in Topic: graffiti art makes it possible to access nineteen sources for information on graffiti. Each of these sites, in turn, lists many more sites. This site provides sources from museums, universities, industry, and a wide range of individuals and groups researching graffiti.

History of Murals and Graffiti Art

Human evolution reveals the progress we have made and how our extended environment has become better, thus making life better. The human brain also evolved, but this progress did not mean that with these changes, everything changed. The desire and need to paint on walls has remained. Lévi Strauss stated that the human mind remains the same whether it be savage or civilized (1969). Howard Gardner summarized, “The savage mind is the mind of us all” (1982, p. 27). None of us have seen graffiti in all its forms, no matter how many books we read, where we travel to, or the people we talk to about graffiti. The majority of these marks have been lost already, most remain undocumented, never to be included in any theoretical thrust toward a consensus. The early images on cave walls were not intended as adornment but as an attempt to understand the environment or immortalize beliefs (Price and Feinman, 1997). Early man memorialized his beliefs on walls deep within caves in an apparent attempt to be the only one to have access to them. As we may not be aware of the symbolism of the eland image in early cave art, we may not understand the message or symbolism of an image to the present day American

muralist. The decision to depict body parts in art seems to be universal (Clottes and Lewis- Williams, 1998). As early man perceived the vulva and penis to be symbols for increase within the group, so does modern man. I think our symbols &170; and &186; parallel early man’s stick figures: in essence modified stick figures. Current muralists represent animals as symbols for sports teams, and as business and advertising symbols. The swastika found in ancient India, Tibet, Peru, and China had a decidedly different meaning than it currently has within the world culture.

Australia

Lascaux, France, has long been considered the site of the oldest known cave murals. This is being seriously challenged as more recent discoveries are analyzed and dated. Recently Douglas Price and Gary Feinman (1997) have reported some of the oldest art and wall paintings in the world may be found in Australia. The elaborate art of the Australian aborigines has been found throughout much of the continent. Their art includes a variety of human and animal figures and dates to the late Pleistocene (ca 20,000 B.C.E.). Mike Smith and Rhys Jones (2001) at the Australian National University reported these dates as “too conservative” (Aboriginal Page, 2001, p. 2). Recently Phil Wright (2001) at the University of Technology, Sydney, confirmed

Spirit figure Nargorkun, Wandjina painting Legendary heroes Sleisbeck, Kimberly Region, Ingaladdi, NewTerritory. Western Australia. New Territory

Figure 1. Cave Paintings (Australian Aboriginal Culture, 1953/85, p. 41).

dates between 48,000 and 58,000 B.C.E. for the aboriginal cave paintings near Kakadu in the Northern Territory. Thermoluminescent dating provided more accurate dating for artifacts at the site. Australian aboriginal cultures were depicted in a wide range of styles: the x-ray painting of western Arnhem Land, the large mouth-less figures of the Wandjina Wales, the large elaborate totemic ancestral figures in Cape York, and the paintings of the mythical creator, Nargorkun, in the South Alligator River region of Arnhem Land. These cave paintings contain a fairly wide range of subject matter (Figure 1). Due to a varying “degree of sanctity” (Aboriginal Page, 2001, p. 1) within the different groups the painting and repainting of images yielded a direct or indirect effect upon their spiritual environment. Australian Culture (1985) stated the use of stencils was widespread, most commonly hands, animal feet, and weapons. Pigments made from clays and rocks were utilized in the cave paintings: notably (a) pipe-clay and gypsum for white, (b) limonite oxide (dust from inside ants’ nests) and fungus for yellow, (c) charcoal for black, and (d) rocks and clays for the predominant red color.

Europe

The French archaeologist Jean Clottes (2001) reports that some of the earliest known wall paintings in Europe are to be found in Italy, and also reported fragments on the floor of Fumane Cave, near Verona, may be some of the world’s older cave paintings – possibly twice the age of Altamira and Lascaux cave art. They may be some 35,000 years old, about the same age as images found at France’s Chauvet Cave. According to Clottes, “It means that painting in caves and shelters was probably widespread during the European Stone Age culture” (p. xxi). The twenty-thousand-year-old images at Lascaux, France, and the seventeen-thousand- year-old paintings in Altamira, Spain, are located in an area stretching across the border between France and Spain. The area appears to be honeycombed with caves. Since the end of the nineteenth century, about two-dozen decorated caves were known to exist near the Ardeche River, east of Lascaux (Clottes, 2001). In 1994, Chauvet Cave was also discovered in this area. Clottes reported that thirty radiocarbon datings have shown human use of the caves 32,000 radiocarbon years ago, an estimated 35,000 calendar years.

According to Clottes, the earliest cave art consisted primarily of animals used for food. Horse images are common on the walls of Chauvet, one over twenty feet long. Horses were eaten, not ridden, by Stone Age Europeans. Many of the animals depicted in Chauvet were predatory – mammoths, rhinos, cave bears, and cave lions. Charcoal and red iron oxide pigments were used on the white clay walls to render seventy portraits of 420 animal figures, no human figures (2001). West of Chauvet, in the Dordogne region of southwestern France, is Lascaux. The Upper Paleolithic (20,000 B.C.E.) groups inhabited it for tens of thousands of years. It has been estimated that Lascaux has been sealed for perhaps 15,000 years. The painted caves are primarily in the Perigord region of southwestern France, in the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain, and the Cantabrian Mountains of northern Spain (Price and Feinman, 1997). Price and Feinman stated that like Chauvet, these cave interiors were not living areas and were only visited briefly. The paintings, also like Chauvet, are almost exclusively of animals; humans are rarely represented. The cave paintings are outlines and colored in with monochrome or polychrome colorants. The animals are usually depicted in profile, in the darkest areas of the caves. This would have required the use of light and some form of scaffolding. Evidence of this was pieces of rope, pine torches, and simple oil lamps made of stone. Sue Banerjee (2001) stated that there were very few depictions of humans in cave art. “If these Ice Age Europeans could make such naturalistic images of the beasts around them, they clearly had the ability to draw themselves. The scarcity of drawings of humans must have been a choice on their part. . . . When humans are depicted in European rock art, the depictions are incomplete and unnatural” (p. 1). The complete figures found in the caves of La Madeleine and Peche-Merle were rare. The smaller number of human figures painted in caves appears to be true throughout all Paleolithic periods. About one hundred have been counted. During the Neolithic periods many are to be found (Clottes & Lewis-Williams, 1998). Images of body parts such as hands, heads, vulvas, and penises are often found. Images of a complete person are rough and hasty, unlike the energetic and naturalistic drawings of the animals. Interpretations of the decorations in the caves include: (a) that they stem purely from artistic desires and should be seen as art for art’s sake; (b) that because of the choice of subjects, the representations are evidence of magical rites intended to ensure success in hunting or fertility; (c) they relate directly to shamanism, a shaman in a hallucinatory trance would create rock art to depict spirit beings; and (d) the Ice Age artists’ accurate representations of animals’ coats were an attempt to mark

the seasons. Esther Pasztory (1982) continued, “The act of painting appears to me more significant than the result” (p. 8). Price and Feinman (1997) noted this painting of a man and bison (Figure 2) at Lascaux represents the only human figure and one of the very few examples of storytelling in Lascaux. The four elements of the painting are: (1) a detailed color drawing of a bison mortally wounded by a spear, (2) a black outline of a male human with a birdlike face, (3) a bird on a stick beneath the human figure, and (4) a spear thrower with hook and handle lying on the ground beneath the man. Interpretations vary from a memorial to the death of a kinsman to the depiction of an Upper Paleolithic myth. Price and Feinman (1997) concluded, “The quality of the paintings is such that we must assume there were recognized artists in the societies of the Upper Paleolithic. The cave art is by and large carefully planned and skillfully executed, capturing both the movement and the power of the animals that are rendered. It is not graffiti, nor is it hastily sketched” (p. 109). scraping them on with a shredded bone or by blowing them on through a hollow bone. Red and

Figure 2. Lascaux Cave (Price & Feinman, 1997, p. 111).

brown paints appear to have been dominant colors to repaint the animals. Animals were predominantly portrayed in a side view. Elsen (1972) wrote,

Foreshortening was a difficult concept for the artist, and the frontal view would also have meant the visual, and perhaps magical, loss of the main body and hind legs of the animal. It was from the side that the most distinctive features of the animal – so important for magical purposes – were to be seen and rendered. (p. 21)

Clottes (2001) concluded, “painting was as sophisticated as it would ever be. For decades scholars theorized that art had slowly advanced from primitive scratching to lively, naturalistic renderings. Surely the subtle shading, ingenious use of perspective and elegant lines of Chauvet’s masterworks placed them at the pinnacle of that progression. Chauvet’s images represented not the culmination of prehistoric art but its earliest known beginnings” (p. 114). It would be thousands of years before anatomically portrayed modern humans appeared in European art. Andre Leroi-Gourhan (as cited by Clottes & Lewis-Williams,1998) believed cave paintings are not insular, isolated works, the “result of a single magical act. Rather, all the images in a cave should be seen as an ensemble, the meaning of each was in accordance with the structuralist philosophy . . . established by its relationship with other images”(p. 82). By contrast, Clottes and Lewis-Williams argued that the cave itself “should be seen as an ensemble, not so much of images . . . as of spaces differentiated by the performance of different rituals, not all of those rituals involved the making of images on the walls, ceilings, or floors” (p. 82). This theory is predicated upon evidence of human activity in the caves. Between the early nomadic hunter/gatherers and the sedentary agricultural peoples there appears to be a void, an absence of developing cultures. Miguel Covarrubias (1954) stated, “Most of the great cultures appear in a state of full development, without clear-cut evolution, either because they were imported or because the intervening stages have not yet been found” (p. 14). In Europe there appears to be an extremely long period of time between known cave art and the early religious art on the walls of churches. Explaining this hiatus would be suppositional at

best. The transition of man from a nomadic life style to a settled existence undoubtedly required an enormous amount of energy in order to survive. Gardner (1980) wrote that the earliest known wall paintings in Southern Europe were in churches, tombs, and private residences. Frescoes had been painted on the walls of private houses at Pompeii in an attempt to simulate deep space, architecture, and the countryside. The Romans carefully prepared their walls. After the plaster, which was specially compounded with marble dust, was laid on in several layers, it was beaten with a smooth trowel until it became very dense. It was then polished to a marble-like finish. Pompeii colors were delicate greens and tans, sometimes striking reds and black, and rich creamy white borders (1980). Although there was an unbroken tradition of mural painting in Italy, Wallbank (1960) stated it was not until the eleventh century that mural painting resurfaced as a major art form when monumental mural painting came into its own once again. The monumental murals in churches depicted religious icons. Campbell (1988) observed,

When you walk into a cathedral, you move into a world of spiritual images. It is the mother womb of your spiritual life – mother church. All forms around are significant of spiritual value. In a cathedral the imagery is in anthropomorphic form God and Jesus and the saints and all are in human form. And in the caves the images are in animal form. But it’s the same thing. The form is secondary. The message is what is important. . . . The message of the caves is of a relationship of time to eternal powers that is somehow to be experienced in that place. (p. 80)

Sub-Saharan Africa

Evidence of early humans continues to be found in Africa. In 1721, paintings of animals were reported in Mozambique, and by 1752 the first mention was made of the Bushman paintings in South Africa, whereas the European ones were totally unknown until 1878 (Frank Willett, 1971).

Figure 3. Herdsman and cattle at Tin Tazarift, Tassili. The lower cow wears a collar around its neck and has a forked object in its mouth. Figures ca 6 to 14 inches in height (Willett, 1971,p. 56).

The earliest ethnographic studies of Bushman (San) art were done by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd in 1870. San art centered on images of the eland, which was deemed a reservoir of spiritual power and the favored animal of the main San god. A painting of an eland was considered a veil between the material and spirit worlds, and the paintings helped to pierce that veil. Often a red line weaved in and out of the rock, appearing to connect physical places to each other and to the spirit world (Lewis-Williams, 2001). Bleek and Lloyd (1870) considered San cave art primitive and crude, a narrative account of hunter/gatherer life. In contrast, Lewis-Williams (2001) agreed with Campbell (1988), that the cave images were representations and repositories of life. The image of the painted eland paid homage to a sacred animal and harnessed its essence. Campbell explained the significance of the eland within the culture:

The basic hunting myth is a kind of covenant between the animal world and the human world. The animal gives its life willingly, with the understanding that its life transcends its physical entity and will be returned to the soil or to the mother through some ritual of restoration. To the Indians of the American plains,

it was the buffalo. On the northwest coast the salmon. In South Africa, the eland is the principal animal that furnishes the food. (p. 72)

Lewis-Williams (2001) believed a 20-foot-long cave mural discovered in South Africa’s Drakensberg Mountains in 1993 provided a fresh insight into the spirit world of the San. The human figures depicted here are half-animal and are often surreal with irregular heads, suggesting an altered state of being. San artists did not paint them after a trance, but to explain they had painted a portal to a place of being and saying “This is what I looked like in the spirit world”(p. 124). Henri Lhote (1950) reported that discoveries of African cave paintings have continued to accumulate; he believes that all the mountainous regions of the Sahara contain rock engravings and paintings. Over thirty thousand examples are known, half of them in the Tassili (southeastern Sahara). The three major divisions of the cave paintings, divided into about thirty styles, include cattle, horses, and camels (Figure 3). Sites in the Tassili have been dated from the mid-fourth to the early third millennium B.C.E. Radiocarbon dates indicate about 4,000 B.C.E. to about 1,200 B.C.E. Frank Willett (1971) found human beings frequent in Tassili paintings, commonly compositions of people and/or animals shown in meaningful relationships to each other. It is probable, he wrote, that most of the surviving paintings were made during the last two millennia, but the tradition is much older. “It no longer seems likely that all these manifestations of rock painting and engraving in Europe and Africa are to be considered either contemporaneous or even necessarily to represent a cultural continuum stretching from eastern Spain to the Cape; nor is there any evidence that the art was spread from Europe southwards across Africa” (p. 56). . Egypt

The paintings on the walls of the Egyptian tombs ca 1,500 B.C.E. were quite different from the cave paintings at Chauvet and Lascaux. Albert Elsen (1972) stated their function was to sustain life by serving “the wants of the deceased in the hereafter, to prevent his second death from starvation or thirst and to ensure his comfort and link him with the living” (p. 29). Gay

Figure 4. Wall mural in tomb, Hierakonopolis (Lloyd, 1961, p. 34).

Robins (1997) further explained that these functions were to ensure their survival in the next world and to form a nexus between the “realms of the living and the dead where the dead could receive the offerings brought by the living. Representations of temple cults ensured its enactment for all in the next world.” (p. 12). The Egyptian walls were divided into zones with strong borders indicative of a highly organized society (Elsen, 1972). A Predynastic (4,000 B.C.E.) wall painting at Kom-el-Ahmar, at the site of Hierakonopolis (Figure 4) showed warriors killing the enemy. Lloyd stated the figures in the foreground are grouped and connected by “intent” (sparring warriors), “action” (slaying an enemy – or enemies, when the plural is expressed graphically), or by “interest” (stag looking back over its shoulder) (1961, p. 35). Painted on the tomb walls during the Old Kingdom (2665- 2155 B.C.E.) were limestone reliefs of the official Ti. The artist represented agriculture and hunting activity which provided for the ka: the soul, which was regarded as dwelling in a person’s body or in an image and continuing after death in the hereafter. Egyptian art related mainly to the king and the elite. Robins (1997) explained, “It embodied the notion of kingship, central to state ideology, and underpinned the privileged position of the elite through whom the king governed. A self-sustaining system that was reinforced to justified the established social order” (p. 245). A relationship existed between the duties and the dead. The tomb chapels were the sites of their meetings. Here they enacted rituals

India

Figure 5. Saddanta Jataka: the Queen Fainting at the Sight of the Tusks. Drawing of fresco. Cave 10, Ajanta, India. Andhra period, first century C.E. (Lee, 1982, p. 111).

of the funerary cult and decorated the chapel. These activities unified families as well as communities. The Minoan, Greek, and Egyptian murals developed in a relatively settled environment; the same was not true in India. The Aryans appeared in India about 2000 B.C.E. and in Western Asia about 1,500 B.C.E. Coomarasawamy (1965) noted that their origin is uncertain, but it is known they came through Afghanistan and the Hindu Kush, settling in the upper Indus valley and later in the Ganges valley. The decorations on these nomads’ hangings were the precursors of the Indian mural tradition. Floral ornaments were enclosed within framed spaces. The result was that the essential element became a pattern rather than just decoration. The man-made caverns cut into the south central India caves of Ajanta contain the remains of the Gupta (320-647) and early Medieval (647-1310) schools of wall painting. The cave paintings show complete mastery and the wide range of the later Gupta period. Helen Gardner (1980) ranked these paintings among the great paintings of the world. The caves were probably chosen as a religious site because of their relative isolation. It was a refuge, a place of pilgrimage, and the site of a number of monks’ cells. The wall paintings represent a great physical effort and an enormous expenditure of funds (Lee, 1950). This Andhara fresco (Figure

5) represents a jataka tale (Buddhist narrative) and reveals an advanced state of pictorial development. The Buddhist murals of Ajanta influenced the painting styles that developed in India and Asia (Behl, 1988). Buddhism moved out of India and spread during the 6th century B.C.E. throughout Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Japan, and China; influencing the previously existing art.

China and Tibet

During the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.E.-220 C.E.) Indian Buddhism influenced China and the jataka stories continued to be the subject for cave murals. Dunhuang was the gateway and communication hub on the ancient Silk Road leading from Asia into Europe (Xin, 1985). It was an oasis nestled in the Qilian Mountains on the edge of the Gobi. There were almost 500 cave temples near Dunhuang (Donovan, 2002). Every surface of the walls and ceilings was covered with frescoes, totaling some 45,000 square meters (Figure 6). These caves were not monastic cells but elaborate shrines. The Dunhuang caves are the world’s largest Buddhist archaeological site (Whitfield, 1996). Lee (1982) wrote that during the Tang Dynasty (619-906), royal tombs were painted with murals depicting hunting scenes set in elementary landscape settings, elaborate formal architectural settings, and sophisticated figural compositions of court ladies and attendants. Tang paintings of figures were “highly developed and placed in an environment beyond the shallow space they occupy” ( p. 262). Lee continued that other than Dunhuang, where Buddhist grottoes were decorated with frescoes, hardly any specimens of secular or religious painting has survived from the Tang Period. The three tombs of Yong Tai, Zhang Huai, and Yi De contain 800 square meters of Tang paintings. Although the techniques had become more sophisticated, the importance of these murals is that they represent a direct continuation of Han art (Figure 7). They depict an incomparable illustration of Tang life in the capital city. The murals from the tomb of Yi De (682-701), erected in 706, are among the most beautiful specimens of this genre.

Figure 6. Dunhuang cave shrine (Webster, 2002, p. 71).

Figure 7. Mural in the tomb of Prince Yi De, 706 C.E., (The Quest for Eternity, 1987, p. 135).

Elisseff (1999) explained that little is known about the artists who created these murals, except for two who completed murals for Yong Tai’s burial monument. Their names are to be found in a famous treatise on painting, Treatise on Renown Painters (Lidai minghuaji) by Zhang Yanyuan (ca 810-880). The brick walls of the tombs were coated with clay and straw and covered with a 4 to 5 m. layer of lime before painting. Zhang (2001) observed that Chinese scholars divide rock paintings into the Southern and Northern schools. The Southern School includes rock paintings of religious rituals and are painted predominantly red. They are located from southwest China to south China. The rock paintings in Tibet belong to the Northern School and depict themes of hunting and religious rituals. In 2002 it has been reported there are more than 5,000 rock paintings at some 60 sites in 14 counties in Tibet. Most are found in the grasslands of the north and the plateau area of the Yarlung Zhangbo River.

Figure 8. Detail of an animal Figure 9 The Yin and Yang, on a throne-back. The central symbol of creation (Williams, painting shows a seated white 1975, p. 150). Avalokiteshvara, 1270-1368 (Neuman, 2001, p. 34).

China's Tibet (2001) reported the earliest rock paintings in Tibet are about 3,000 years old. Yaks are the most frequently portrayed images, with the swastika a close second. The swastika pattern arrived in Tibet with Buddhism during the Tubo Period (7th to 13th century). It was not used alone but with the sun, moon, trees, animals, sorcerers, circles, and banners or patterns representing dwelling tents. The swastika was closely related to religious rituals and to production and life. It was associated with trees, which are rarely seen on the Tibetan Plateau. Historical records describe a God Tree in Western Ngari where people paid sacrifices to the God Tree and worshiped trees in their daily lives. Helmut Neuman (2001) noted that Buddhism had moved west to central Tibet during the second wave of Buddhism. The golden temple (gser.khan) of Shalu in central Tibet is one of the most prominent examples of Buddhist murals in Tibet. Only a few paintings of the eleventh and early fourteenth centuries survive. The later murals (Figure 8) are painted in the Newari style and flourished under the great master Aniko (1245-1306) at the Yuan (1270-1368) court. Linrothe (2002) reported that both monastic and lay painters are currently involved in “an extraordinary renaissance of Tibetan painting” in Rebgong in Amdo County (p. 48). The religious devotional paintings are produced mainly for an indigenous monastic market. Since the 18th century, Rebgong has been a famed regional center for Tibetan Buddhist art. As Williams (1976) has observed, the Chinese have had a horror vacui or dislike for undecorated spaces. A rather wide selection of designs developed within China as well as the surrounding areas. These designs have been found on bridges, temples, houses, ceramics, textiles, carpets, and numerous articles for common everyday use. These images have often been adopted by other cultures purely for their sense of design without a clear understanding of origin and meaning. The most frequently seen design (Figure 9), in the past as well as the present, commonly known as the key-pattern, meander, or thunder pattern is the egg symbol known as the Yin and Yang.1 C. K. Chu (1981) contended the ancient premise of Yin and Yang has been modified to become the symbol for the Chinese martial art tai chi chuan. It is highly probable that those Western artists who utilize this image within their murals are unaware of its original meaning and origins.

Central and South America

Price and Feinman (1993) noted that people migrated into Mesoamerica approximately 10,000-15,000 years ago. From their arrival until 1519 C.E., when the Spanish arrived, Mesoamerican societies had developed an architectural emphasis on large public spaces. Pre- Columbian Painting: Murals of the Mesoamerica noted the mural art (Figure 10) primarily depicted ritual feasts and offerings. It allowed the imagination to go beyond reality, a reality that was altered. The interpretation of these images allows us to penetrate into their world (Fuente, B., Falcon, T., Gallut, M.E.R., Solis, F., Cicero, L.S. & Uriarte, M.T., 1999). Alvarez (1999) wrote that most of pre-Hispanic mural paintings were painted over lime plastered walls and a few over clay. The most common bonding material used for construction in ancient times was lime. In Mesoamerica, lime and sand were used as mortar and plaster. Kelemen (1949) stated the Temple of the Sun at Teotihuacan, northeast of Mexico City, was the religious center of the community. This 100 B.C.E. basaltic lava structure (Figure 10) was covered with a thick layer of brightly painted stucco. It stands above the other temples and surrounding buildings. Many buildings within this complex had elaborate murals with sacred themes and complex symbolism: the rain god Tlalock, shells, jaguars, and plumed serpents.

Figure 10. Mural with mythical animals, Teotihuacan (Keleman, 1948, p. 49).

Figure 11. Mural, Chichen Itza (Kelemen, 1949, p. 61).

Parallels of this complex are found in religious centers in Mexico and Mayan ruins in the Yucatan. Gallut (1999) reported that Teotihuacan was the site where the reunion of the gods gave birth to a new era. He continued,

Artistic creativity is one of the characteristic forms of the human spirit's manifestation. Within this activity, painting is an artistic expression, in which a whole universe of ideas and beliefs are shown through forms and designs and in the use of colors and lines. On many occasions, the artist depicts symbols and patterns which are the result of cultural convention. Teotihuacan was a completely painted city. . . . A very important part of the society’s thinking is represented in its pictorial legacy. It is in its art that the city acquires its ultimate expression. (p. 65)

The political and administrative center of each Mayan site was composed of monumental architecture (Cicero, 1999) . These were covered with stone reliefs, stucco figures and painted scenes. The shapes, lines, volume, and color were the visual language that allowed the society to ascertain which group was in power.

According to Gardner (1980), the Mayan painter’s colored murals were part of the building mainly on the inside. The figures were first outlined in red and filled in with flat colors then outlined again in black. Kelemen (1949) noted the Mayan site at Bonampak, Mexico, had panoramic murals of dancing, musicians, groups of esteemed personages, captives from a raid, and records of festivals. Chichen Itza was the primary locus of truly monumental construction on the northern Yucatan. This Chichen Itza mural from the Temple of the Warriors (Figure 11) shows warriors arriving in canoes and doing battle with the local populace (Price & Feinman, 1993). Keleman (1949) interpreted this as a peaceful village that was attacked as “an illustration of a fairytale from another planet” (p. 34). Almost all wall surfaces of the stepped pyramid at Chichen Itza were decorated with polychrome reliefs and paintings (Schmidt, 1998). Long after the Spanish conquest the tradition of murals continued. Christian and pre- Colombia themes were integrated in a Franciscan monastery at Cuauhtinchan, in the Puebla state of Mexico. The pre-Colombian themes were the eagle and the jaguar, representations of light and darkness, and the Annunciation of the Christian belief system. Keleman (1949) noted, “The mingling of pre-Colombian symbols with Christian iconography indicates the difficulties the missionaries had to face. Apparently, sometimes pagan symbols were permitted, because they helped illuminate aspects of Christianity” (p. 175).

Mexico

Rochfort (1993) noted that northward into Mexico, the mural work of Los Tres Grandes - Jose Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros - spans five decades from the early 1920s to, in the case of Siqueiros, the early 1970s. Their murals demonstrate the development of a relationship between an art movement and a modern twentieth-century society. Rochfort (1993) stated “How the murals of these three painters reflected the changing realities of Mexico and its people, and how in turn the people perceived the murals throughout those changing decades feeds into the important wider question concerning the function that art can have within a modern secular society” (p. 11). Rivera and other artists opposed art produced at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City (Rochfort, 1993). Their aim was to replace art that was essentially spiritual and symbolist

with art which was reactive to academic realism. Another Mexican artist, Gerardo Murillo (1875-1964), wanted a national art and a school of modern painting. He believed Mexican art was equal to European art while continuing to be interested in developments occurring in Europe. His idea for a Mexican national art was for it to be monumental, be accessible to the public, and to incorporate the use of workshops and group work. Although the Mexican artists rejected the idea that European art was superior to Mexican art, they were definitely influenced by the images and techniques. Hamill (1999) observed that Diego Rivera would incorporate what he had learned from Murillo and Europeans when, in 1921, he painted the mural The Creation. He used encaustic, a wax-based painting that needed to be kept warm so it would anneal to the wall. Although this technique had been used in the ninth-century murals in the Mayan city of Bonampak it reached its peaks of craft and aesthetics in Italy before and during the Renaissance. The basic technical principles of fresco painting had not changed much in five hundred years. Speed, patience, clarity of design, and preparation were required, because the plaster would not adhere to a damp surface. The plaster was a mixture of sand or marble dust and water. The sand needed to be free of clay, mica, or sea-salt. Rivera preferred two parts red marble dust and one part lime mixed with water. The first layer was strengthened with animal or vegetable fibers and trowelled on about one-half inch thick. After the plaster dried, the surface was scratched, providing a stronger grip for the second layer. This second layer, arriciato or brown coat, was stiffer than the first layer. Because it dried fairly fast, the third coat, intonaco or finish coat, covered only an area which could be painted in about eight hours. Siqueiros was influenced by the frescoes of Masaccio (1401-28). Masaccio had achieved “the added power to control the onlooker’s attention gained through the use of several points of view within a single composition” (Rochfort, 1993, p. 31). Siqueiros was also influenced by the paintings of the Baroque. The creation of architectural space using optical illusion would emerged in his later murals. Mexican public art during the 1920s was based on social and political developments. The images emanated from national idealism and experience. The murals of Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros depicted revolutionary themes, the land and the cultural traditions of the people, and revolution. To Orozco (1929), “the struggles and events of history are a part of a single conflict in which the possibilities of progress vie with the pressing forces of reaction, greed, power and

corruption” (p. 111). His view of American civilization was one in which the conflict remained the same, but the circumstances changed with time. The “visual historical methodology” of Rivera and Orozco was profoundly different but both sought their own identity within Mexican culture and society (p. 9).

United States

It was inevitable that outside influences would impact murals in the United States even though it possessed a rich legacy of indigenous art. Current theories of the migration of early man into the Americas opens up the discussion of the origin of influences on North American Indian Art. Surely the early nomadic peoples of North America sought safety and security deep in the numerous mountain caves. In time their art and religion flourished, and they continued to develop into more complex cultures. Across the Sub-Arctic, Cree Indians painted the surfaces of rocks with animals and Manitou: “The forces, present in all things animate and inanimate, that controlled the destinies of men. These forces were often beneficent, but their temperaments were mercurial, and they had the power to harm as well as to help” (Maxwell, 1978, p. 141). Aboriginal settlements are fairly easy to find in the United States and Canada but interpretation of the sites is rather difficult. North American rock art is seen as tribal voices providing living links to the past. Conway (1993) stated, “In the 20th century, only a few aboriginal societies retain such direct links to their heritage – native Australians, the San Bushman hunters of southern Africa, some south American Indian groups, and several dozen tribes in North America. Rock art unlike its European counterpart, remains a living tradition” (p. 19). Rock art sites are considered holy ground with their genesis in dreams, thoughts, and sensory experiences, which relate the message that time, and generations are merely passing intervals. There are over 10,000 rock art sites in California alone. Conway (1993) explained that iron hematite and red ochre are the most commonly known pigments in North American rock art. The red pigment represents “the blood shed by giant beavers that in the far off dream time changed the shape of the land. Algonkian shamans recall stories about the chignebikuk – huge sea serpents that inhabited he waters of the Great

Figure 12. Kuau kiva mural (Gardner, 1980, p. 430).

Lakes” (p. 39). Shamans interpreted this as “an ecstatic form of religion in which the practitioner journeys to the subconscious, inner landscapes” (p. 103). The Four-Corner area on the Colorado Plateau (Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico) is the site of numerous rock art paintings. Conway (1993) explained that rock art has accumulated on the canyons and mesas for a thousand years. Northwest of this area, on the North West Coast, are the elaborately decorated house fronts painted by the Tsimshian. McDonald (1976) explained that pigments such as red ochre, charcoal, and graphite were utilized to make the colors. He believed fish oil was used to bind the pigments. A prehistoric paint kit exists which contained a fine-grained stone, used as a pallet. Conway (1993) concluded that the animals on a rock-shelter wall in the western Grand Canyon show that prehistoric people continued to paint human forms, geometric shapes, and numerous animals. The walls and ceilings were painted with ground mineral pigments. Some pigments may have been mixed with organic binders such as plant juice or urine that may serve to date the works.

Gardner (1980) stated that between 1,200 and 1,400 C.E., well before the arrival of Europeans, the ancestors of the present-day Hopi and Zuñi people painted elaborate murals on their kivas depicting details of deities associated with agricultural fertility. This Kuaua mural (Figure 12) depicts a “lightning man” on the left and a fish and an eagle in the center. These images are associated with rain, the fertility of the earth, and the life-giving properties of the seasonal rains. The Southwest Pueblo is the only area where plaster was used for making walls. Feest (1980) noted it is unclear what influence Mexico had on mural painting in the Southwest. They differ stylistically. The charcoal and mineral pigments utilized may have been organic paints. There is little knowledge of the origin of the organic binders used. The walls were first covered with adobe plaster or whitewashed with gypsum. Later, paint was applied with stiff brushes and fingers. The earliest known Pueblo murals, dating to about 1,000 B.C.E., were primarily simple lines and motifs with geometric figures. Human figures are seldom seen. This linear and geometric tradition spread to the south and the west. The decorative elements of the concurrent pottery were replicated within the murals. Between 1,300 C. E. and the Spanish conquest of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Anasazi mural painting attained its highest level of development in the Jeddito valley in the Hopi region of Arizona (Awatovi, Kawaika-a). This was the drainage area for the central Rio Grande in New Mexico (Pottery Mound, Kuaua). Maxwell (1978) believed Kuaua was a meeting ground for the two cultures for over a century. Two kinds of kivas were excavated: the round chambers of the Anasazis and the square chambers of the Mogollons. Both had wall murals. As Feest (1980) noted, although they have aspects in common, these areas developed independently. The repeated plastering of the walls, up to one hundred times, chronicled the stylistic changes across the centuries. Present day Pueblo mural painting is primarily allied with ceremonial activities. Maxwell (1978) continued, “The kivas symbolize the World Below, from which come the spirits that are said to inhabit all things animate and inanimate. And it is to the World Below that the Hopis return after death” (p. 207). Covarrubias (1954) believed the bright colored murals of the Pueblo IV period (1,200-1,450) were the most spectacular. These murals are found at Awatovi and Kawaika-a in the Hopi area of Arizona, and at Kuaua, near Albuquerque, New Mexico. The representations of deities, animal spirits, and offerings by the Awatovi were the finest.

Figure 13. Crow Lodge of Twenty-five Buffalo Skins, George Catlin, 1832-33, 61 x 74 cm. The lodge was owned by the women, but the painting shows exploits of the husband (Hassrick, 1977, p.189).

Spicer (1962) wrote, although the Spanish, the Mexicans, and the Anglos repeatedly invaded the Hopis, the Hopis succeeded in preserving their culture far better than any other Indian tribes. The Hopis did not separate daily activities, religious observance, or artistic creation. Broder (1978) stated that their earliest symbols, designs, and subjects found in caves are used in the studio paintings and murals of the 20th century Hopi artists. As late as the end of the nineteenth century, Hopi paintings were a form of visual prayer. Murals on underground kiva walls were a communal occupation. Spicer (1962) stated, “The artist, as a contributor to the tribal welfare, was rewarded with inner peace and a sense of well-being, rather than with the pride of

personal achievement or status as an artist” (p. 7). The murals consisted of two-dimensional linear figures and religious ceremonies rendered mainly in earth tones, painted on a dry plaster base. These pueblos have been occupied from about 500 C.E. to the present. The murals were changed as the ceremonial cycle progressed. Characteristics common to the murals include “The color areas are separated by definite, sharply marked lines and there is never shading or blending of color areas; the artist occasionally used a dry brush technique which gives a spotted effect; and the artists bordered or outlined each color area with a continuous line, which is predominantly black or white but is occasionally red” (p. 207). Other than the black paint, all the colors were derivatives of organic material ground from natural minerals, such as red and yellow ochre, malachite, and azurite. Black pigments were made from carbon. Smith (1952) concluded saliva created from chewing seeds secreted a vegetable oil, and was used to bind the pigments. A glossy surface was obtained by painting it with the whites of eagle eggs. Their paintbrushes were made from chewed yucca leaves. Marvin Cohodas (1978) agreed with Watson Smith’s use of an outline to define mural types and his suggestions of a chronology for Awatobe and Kawaiks-a murals. These types are defined by the relationships between figure, field, and frame. Smith’s (1952) chronology also suggested the types be defined by the ceramic remains found at the site. Late 19th century Sioux, Crow, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, and Kiowa tribes painted buffalo, deer, elk, and antelope hides. Their murals were not on the walls of caves but the walls of their homes – the tipis (Figure 13). Young (1986) noted,

Most spectacular were the autobiographically painted tipis. These were limited in number, as only one was allowed per band among the Sioux, while among the Kiowa and other tribes, only families with a hereditary right established through civil, military, or religious leadership could thus embellish their dwellings. Painted tipis recorded the history not only of an individual but the tribe. (p. 59)

The structures sheltering and protecting early humans, whether it be the earth and stone of caves, the plaster or wooden walls of houses, or the animal skins of a tipi, have been decorated with images in an attempt to understand, to commemorate, and to explore their worlds. With the

arrival of the Europeans to the United States, a sustained attempt was made to destroy and obliterate the native cultures. With the arrival of these foreign groups of differing ethnic origins, a wide range of decorative arts was introduced. Interpretation of the murals of these early immigrants allows us to explore the world of past cultures imported into this country. Anderson (1983) categorized American murals within three historical periods: (1) 1700- 1850, (2) 1930-1943, and (3) contemporary, beginning about 1967. “Each of these mural periods manifests its own characteristics in keeping with the popular culture of its time, the nature of its origins, and the thrust of its aesthetic values” (p. 25). During the first period (1700-1850) itinerant painters decorated middle class homes with murals painted on panels or canvas and were placed over mantels. They were located in New England, mainly Massachusetts. In time, the line between the trained and the untrained artist would become decidedly blurred. The Armory Show of 1913 introduced early 20th century American artists to modernism, redirecting their focus to new immigrants, the city’s working poor, and their urban environment. Wardlaw (1995) described the African-American artists development as a “figurative tradition that could accept black physiognomy and celebrate its features” (p. 76). This change would dominate the character of their art. Wardlaw believed John Biggers contributed to this distinctive tradition. Within Anderson’s (1983) second historical period (1930-43) were other talented muralists whose influence has affected the current mural tradition in this country. The Harlem mural Aspects of Negro Life (1934) by Aaron Douglas (1899-1917) ushered in the African- American mural tradition. His muted palette and highly stylized figures describe black contributions to American life and culture. His murals were influenced by African flat patterns. “Using carefully composed silhouetted shapes to suggest the monumentality and permanence of Egyptian art, Douglas shows evidence of having assimilated ideas associated with Art Deco, as well as the simplified decorative motifs promoted by his mentor Winold Reiss” (Wardlaw, 1995, p. 81). Wardlaw (1995) continued, “No one can understand the thirties without remembering the influence of Mexico both on the painters of social protest and upon the mural paintings done under the Federal government projects” (p. 8). Anderson (1983) agreed with Wardlaw, “The Mexican Revolution, which occurred in the early part of the twentieth century, was to produce a mural renaissance in that country which would have a profound effect on mural making in the United States” (p. 48).

Figure 14. Ascension mural, John Biggers, 1988 (Wardlaw, 1995, p. 152).

Although large-scale WPA (Works Progress Administration) murals in public buildings were not a resounding success, they were corresponding indicators of the Depression and World War II. Wardlaw (1995) classified these murals in two categories: (1) depictions of the American scene, especially the Midwest, associated with the Regionalists John Stuart Curry, Grant Wood, and Thomas Hart Benton; and (2) murals reminiscent of the Mexican muralist Orozco addressing social protest. They sought to “reexamine rural and small-town America as well as her urban and industrial life, [and] sharpen its comments on social injustice” (p. 81). Wardlaw concluded, by the end of World War II the American Regionalist mural movement had declined, but the African-American rural tradition was still in its ascent. In the 1940s and 1950s murals by African-Americans thrived in historically black colleges (Wardlaw, 1995). Prior to the 1950s, the murals of Hale Woodruff (1918-1979) and Charles White (1918- 1979) continued the African-American mural tradition. The direct influence of Mexican social art was most evident in the murals of Charles White. Wardlaw (1995) wrote, a deep sense of pathos, anxiety, and peril of American society were evident in his murals when he described the human form as sculptured rounded masses with “strongly etched faces, rippling muscles, and bold rhetorical gestures” (p. 82) Anderson’s third historical period chronicled the contemporary mural movement beginning in the United States in 1967. Later, murals regained attention with Chicago’s Wall of Respect 1967. It was a depiction of African-American heroes, which Wardlaw (1995) stated, “transformed visual explosions of energy to express inner-city cultural and political feelings” (p. 81). Anderson (1983) concurred with Wardlaw that the Wall of Respect “is a community . . . effect . . . generated . . . out of a need for an art form . . . highly visible . . . which expressed black ideas and black concerns” (p. 105). Anderson’s observation appeared prophetic; “it provided much of the inspiration for a whole generation of murals in Chicago and elsewhere in the United States” (p. 108). The goal of John Biggers (b. 1924) was “to achieve unity, in the sense of the wholeness and harmony reached after transcendence and transformation” (Wardlaw, 1995, p. 10). A wide vocabulary of symbols and metaphors enabled him to achieve unity in his art and in his life. Through the exploration of the meaning of family and community he examined the roles of elders and young people.

Biggers was influenced by the interlocking repetitions and patterns of quilts. Wardlaw (1995) believed, Biggers’ Quilting Party (1980-81) is reminiscence of Faith Ringold and Miram Schapiro’s abstract compositions. Biggers incorporated the past, the future, African American culture. Wardlaw believed Biggers’ work parallels William Walker’s Wall of Respect as “a communal sounding board for the emerging Black Pride movement” (p. 106). Wardlaw (1995) wrote, John Biggers, like others in the 1980s searched his conscious, creating new imagery in order to produce a new body of work. In his mural Ascension, (Figure 14) Biggers utilized “complicated symbolic language” and “abstracted and geometrical integration” (Wardlaw, 1988, p. 152). The overlapping geometric forms of circles, pyramids, and triangles resemble medieval stained-glass windows. Using what he calls “sacred geometry” (the knowledge of the ancient meaning of mathematical measures) his paintings are a “timeless message of the generative energy of the universe and its inseparability from all creative and imaginative endeavors” (p. 152). Anderson (1983) considered the third historical period of American murals (1967 to 1983) to be locally specific. This continued to be true of the street murals from that time well into the present time, providing the definition of local has been expanded. That which had been considered local in the nineteenth and early twentieth century America was physically nearby. The average person tended to live their entire lives within a small, circumscribed area. Influences upon people arrived with the rare visitor or occasional piece of printed material. Local influences were indeed local. With today’s high tech transportation and communications local may be the next street or city, Afghanistan, China, or Peru. Elementary school children readily recognize photographs of the moon. Within the framework of Anderson’s historical periods of American murals, a fourth period, since 1983, may well be culturally specific. The timeframe would over lap his dates, 1960s to the present. Graffiti-mural art can be defined as a cultural movement and a form of self- expression. Paralleling other art forms, choices are made by the artist such as the use of light and color or what genre to paint. Riverdale (2002) in The Purpose of Graffiti wrote, “Graffiti tries to fulfill a void in people that began when they were silenced and ended when they painted. The choices or views of the people within a cultural movement is [sic] the purpose of that movement, which proves true in graffiti” (p. 5). As early as 1973, United Graffiti Artist selected top subway

artists from all around New York City and presented their work in the formal context of an art gallery. In The Graffiti Parade in New York Magazine, Richard Goldstein recognized the artistic potential of subway artists. These artists were by no means the very first writers but were the first to be recognized outside the newly formed subculture (http://nadaone.com/pages/graff-history- 1.jtml). In the last half of the twentieth century numerous scholars have proposed many classifications for street art. In Wallbangin’ – Graffiti and Gangs in L. A., Susan Phillips (1999) defined two categories of graffiti art: popular graffiti and community-based graffiti. Popular graffiti art was defined as folk epigraphy, latrinalia, love proclamations, phallic symbols, jokes, sports teams, death notices, and holiday celebrations. This type of graffiti art is generally written in the national language so that everyone can understand it and possibly participate or respond. It is not anonymous, but filled with names and other information coded with hidden meaning. Community-based graffiti art is usually divided into three categories: gang, political, and Hip- Hop. The initials, codes, and numbers within gang graffiti art are layered with meanings directed primarily at gang members (Figure 15). Phillips (1999) reported the Family Swan Bloods were one of the many gangs of Los Angeles. The first hand signs a 7, a 9, and an F for the 79 Family Swan Bloods. The second hand signs a swan with a head, two wings, and a tail. To

Figure 15. Hand signs from the 79 Family Swan Bloods, gang graffiti,1996, Los Angeles (Phillips, 1999, p. 243)

the right are the numbers 79, 804, 89, and 92, representing the streets enclosing their territory. Below are the letters CK (Crips Killas) All DAY. All gangs generally write the same messages defining an area and their presence. Phillips (1999) noted political graffiti art has historically been one of the strongest forms of graffiti in the world, representing either individuals or groups of the politically discontented. When individuals try to negotiate power through their written ideas, their personal or group agendas may possibly influence their messages in a variety of ways. Public and privately owned walls have historically been a prime location for the graffiti artist to express these ideas. This political message (Figure 16) by students, People’s Painters, declared !YA BASTA! UNITE TO END POLICE BRUTALITY in reply to an incident of police brutality against two Puerto Rican students. It survived three days before it was over-painted. This effort was one of many which aided in solidifying groups to paint other political messages on the campus (Crockcroft, Weber, & Crockcroft, 1998). Bushnell (1990) observed that during the Soviet regime, the KGB would some- time write graffiti intended to give the illusion of popular sentiment against dissidents. Chaffee (1989) added that political parties in South America have sometimes paid people to go around spraying a pretended spontaneous support for their candidates. Phillips (1999) reported popular

Figure 16. Unite to End Police Brutality, political graffiti, 1973, Livingston College, Piscataway, NJ (Crockcroft, Weber & Cockcroft, 1998, p. 195).

heresay alleged that even the LAPD sometimes crossed out gang graffiti in order to try to incite warfare between rivals. How successful these attempts at subterfuge were remains questionable. Bushnell (1990) has observed during the 1970s and 1980s, the Hip Hop culture became very popular in the United States spilling over onto the international scene. In 1987 Henry Chalfant and James Prigoff documented the expansion of aerosol art in Spray Can Art. Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper’s Subway Art (1984) and the films Style Wars by Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant and Wild Style by Charlie Ahern influenced the European scene. Another link to this art form was our global communication network consisting of travel, magazines, and cyberspace. Bushnell (1990) stated that Hip-Hop writers repeatedly write their nametags everywhere in an attempt to become known as one of the pioneers of modern graffiti. The content, forms, and style of Hip-Hop graffiti art were readily apparent. Names, letters, and numerals were created within a specific set of guidelines, specific to an area. Killian Tobin (1995) has stated, “This new form is artistic graffiti . . . a complex artistic form of personal expression” (p. 1). Riverdale (2001) stated numerous sources name Cornbread as one of the pioneers of modern graffiti. He wrote as early as the 1950s in Philadelphia. Cornbread's crew was Delta Phi Soul, his own fraternity. The movie Cornbread, Earl, and Me was based on his life (Powers, 1999). Elements of the Hip-Hop graffiti art tradition that emerged out of the New York subways in the 1970s were Tags, Throw-Ups, and Pieces (Arpone, 2002). Tags (nametags) are one

Figure 17. Tags, STAY HIGH 149, LEE 163, PHASE 2, VINNY, ROTO, CA, FUTURA 2000, AJ 161, FUZZ, and TAKI 183, 1970s, New York City (149st, 2003, p. 1).

colored single-line writings of an artist’s nicknames or initials (Figure 17). Taki 183, a young Greek named Demetrius, was an early tagger. His Tag, lower right corner, is representative of the early Tags - a combination of his name and street number. He was so prolific that the New York Times published interviews with him in 1971. STAY HIGH 149, upper left corner, used a smoking joint as the cross bar from his H and a stick figure from the television series THE SAINT. PHASE 2, center top, later developed Softie letters, more commonly referred to as Bubble letters. Bubble letters and Broadway style were the earliest forms of actual pieces and considered the foundation of many styles. Woodward (1999) said that the writers experimented with many calligraphic styles flourishes, stars, and other designs in an attempt to make their Tags unique. He observed stylistic devices such a bits, half caps, arrows, chips, and cuts were often used to further define the space. Writers occasionally utilized crowns to proclaim themselves as kings. This celebration of the individual did not translate into other countries. Łukasz Guzek (2001) observed,

The creation of tags is a kind of activity conceivable in extremely individualistic culture only. It is only in such culture that the ego and its manifestations are valuable. . . . In postwar Poland, the Communist regime systematically and successfully suppressed individualism. . . . Communist culture was too weak an offer for a strong ego. It proposed only a model of mediocrity, indistinctness, existing in fear of more original workings of the mind: it encouraged the conviction that it was impossible to do any better. It was a stranger to all things creative. . . . Polish culture . . . does not provide the mechanisms that release the need to be creative, which is essential for the ego. There is no exchange of creative impulses between the culture and the individual. (p. 1)

George Stowers (1997) compared the simplest forms of graffiti commonly found in bathrooms or on exterior surfaces with the tag. He described a Tag as “a fancy, scribble-like writing of one’s name or nick-name” (p. 1). He concluded the tag has little or no aesthetic appeal. The intent of the tag is not aesthetic but the simple proclamation “I was here.”

Figure 18. Throw-Up, SE 3. New York City (Powers, 1999, p. 90).

But J. D. Woodward (1999) stated it was the name “which is the core of graffiti, and the tag is the quickest and simplest representation of this coded identity. The tag is the subject matter, the structure of the art that is graffiti art” (p. 5). He believed the Tag is a calligraphic form. Devon Brewer and Marc Miller (1990) in Deviant Behavior, also agreed the Tag is a complex calligraphic symbol that has no meaning except to identify the writer. Stowers (1997) observed, “Taggers scribble and graffitists do art” (p. 3).

Figure 19. Piece graffiti. Heliz, 1998,New York City (Powers, 1999, p. 128).

Figure 20. Dick Tracy, Production Piece. Caine 1, 1995, Los Angeles, CA (Powers, 1999, p. 78).

Figure 21. Complex 3-D Style. SKET BLT, 2000, New Haven, CT (Graffiti.org, 2003, p. 1).

Figure 22. Straight Letter Style. CES, 1998, Los Angeles, CA (Powers, 1999, p.135).

Figure 23. Creeper Style. SIX PACK (GHOST) & SANE, York City (Powers, 1999, 145).

Figure 24. Bubble Letter Style, SUROC, 1998, Philadelphia, PA (Powers, 1999, p. 44).

Figure 25. Wild Style, VFRFresh, 1993, New York City (Powers, 1999, p. 28).

Woodward (1999) explained Tag Scale writers started to render their Tags in larger scale. The standard nozzle width of a spray paint can is narrow, so these larger Tags, while drawing more attention than standard Tags, did not have much visual weight. Writers began to increase the thickness of the letters and would also outline them with an additional color. They discovered that caps from other aerosol products could provide a wider width of spray. This led to the development of the Masterpiece. It is hard to say who did the first Masterpiece but it is commonly credited to SUPER COLLO 223 of the Bronx and WAP of Brooklyn. The thicker letters provided the opportunity to further enhance the name. Writers decorated the interior of the letters with what are termed “designs,” first with simple polka dots, later with crosshatches, stars, and checkerboards. Designs were limited only by the artist’s imagination.

Throw-Ups developed from bubble letters (Figure 18). Stowers (1997) wrote that PHASE 2 developed Bubble Letters, sometimes referred to a Softie Letters. Bubble letters and Broadway were introduced by Philadelphia’s TOPCAT 126. These letters would evolve into block letters, leaning letters, and blockbusters. Later, arrows, curls, connections, and twists adorned letters. These additions became increasing complex and would become the basis for Mechanical or Wild style lettering. Throw-Ups (thrown up on the walls) are compositions of one or two colors with a two dimensional appearance. Val-Jean Belton (2001) described the possible inside designs of a Throw-Up as stars, crosshatching, dots, or checkerboards. Other innovations of the Throw-Up were the use of drip designs, the swastika, and upside down letters. Woodward (1999) continued one Throw-Up designed by REAS in New York used a swastika in the center of one letter. This was used “to draw negative attention” (p. 6) to his work. This was a meaning far different from the Chinese and Tibetan meaning for the same symbol. Writers have exhibited a preference for particular letters or numbers or combinations of letters and numbers. The vowels A and E are seen more than U in Throw-Ups. Woodward (1999) thought this was due to an aesthetic preference for curvilinear versus linear letters. He defined a Throw-Up as “a name painted quickly with one layer of spray paint and an outline” (p. 5). It is not unusual to see only the first two or the first and last letters of the name. It is unusual to see all the letters in a Tag used in a Throw-Up. The writer aims to use as little paint as possible. The outline of a throw-up is deemed successful if it is accomplished in one-hit – a single action from the beginning to the end - one long continuous movement. Kan (1974) described this same control of movement and paint as one of the elementary aspects of Chinese calligraphy. Woodward (1999) enumerated the desired criteria for the Throw-Up design element: 1) one or two colors, (2) innovative, (3) as simple as possible, (4) quickly painted, (5) well proportioned, (6) curve smooth and continuous, (7) letters of similar size and weight, and (8) prolific output. Stowers (1997) described a Throw-Up as a two-color Tag usually “in outline or bubble- like lettering” (p. 2). The image is more substantial than a Tag but requires less time and paint than a Piece. The most complicated form of Hip-Hop graffiti is a Masterpiece or Piece. Woodward (1999) described a Piece as all graffiti painting that are more than Tags or Throw-Ups. He attributed the first Piece to SUPERKOOL 223 when he added a fat cap to his spray can about 1972. It resulted in an enlarged outlined Tag. Woodward stated a Piece must

have at least two colors, an outline color and a fill color, a background color and a highlight color. A Throw-Up is one or two letters from a Tag while a Piece is the full name. Devon Brewer and Marc Miller (1990) defined a Piece as “a highly composed mural depicting a word or words, background, characters, quotes and messages” (p. 2). Pieces take years of practice, as well as native talent. The object is always the same – the name of the writer (Figure 19). Sometimes names are barely recognizable because they are so wrapped up in intertwining decorative letter designs, interwoven within one another, highlighted in a multitude of hues, guarded by cartoon-like figures. Dedicated piecers work to master a style, using sketchbooks to plan out their compositions and practice new lettering styles (Phillips, 1999). The background of a Piece may be as simple cloud form. It may be covered with stars a cloud of stars. Woodward (1999) believed this cloud concept originated from the comics. By 1973, large areas of New York City were covered so heavily with graffiti that the cloud was used to hide the existing images in order to have a suitable surface on which to paint. Another influence from the comics was the stars or shines used to create a dynamic effect much like bright lights at night. Shines are found on one side of a letterform. The lines forming shines/stars should be thinner at the ends or tips. Stowers (1997) further defined a Production as a sub-category of a Piece. A Production is usually the size of a mural with original or familiar cartoon characters and the writer’s name (Figure 20). Farrell (1994) estimated most pieces are 6-15 feet wide and as tall as the space available upon which the artist has access to paint. This size surface requires 20-30 cans of spray paint. In comparison, thirty cans will cover the side of a freight car. Riverdale (2003) described subtypes of Pieces as Complex 3-D, Wild Style, and Characters. The Complex 3-D are complex versions of letters rendered in such a manner as to suggest a three dimensional image. In the Wild Style the key factors are letters and the reinterpretation of their structures (New York City Cyber Bench, 2003). Stowers (1997) noted the Wild Style changes with each artist’s interpretation of the alphabet. Primary colors, fading, foreground and background are used in this style (Figure 21). Riverdale (2002) stated the Characters are stylized cartoons. Woodward (1999) further defined the genres for pieces in Public, Semi-Public, Wild-style, Semi-Wild Style, Blockbuster, and Abstract. His analysis and nomenclature is informative but most difficult to follow. Woodward’s Public Style is easily readand is comprised of several formats – Straight Letter Style (Figure 22), Creeper Style - based

on the font and the common Dripping Styles of horror comics (Figure 23), Western Saloon, or Bubble Letter (Figure 24). In the Woodward’s (1999), Wild Style (Figure 25) the letters are more dynamic, have more ornaments, counterweights, and arrows, linking a more sophisticated image. Janice Rahn (2002) in Painting Without Permission – Hip-Hop Graffiti Subculture likened, the Wild Style lettering to Celtic interlace. Only the accomplished graffiti artist attempts and succeeds in this style. The German artist, Mirko Reisser, aka Daim,3 (2002) defined the Semi Wild Style as complex with ornaments such as bars and arrows. The letters have become more dynamic thanthe simple style and blend with each other in many different ways. He stated, “It is vital that the letters are compact and stem from one another.” In the Wild Style the letters are more dynamic, have more ornaments, counterweights, and arrows, linking a more sophisticated image. Daim described the Complex Style (Figure 26) as a continuation of the Wild Style. The Complex Style uses a maximum number of ornaments, such as arrows, links, glass effects, and blending. The beginning and ending images are a completely different style. Skem (2002) explained the 3-D has no traditional outlines and the division between the planes is by shadows. Only a few writers use 3-D. It has been stated it was the highest level of a writer’s development. They are artists not writers. This style developed in Europe in the 1990s.

Figure 26. Loki, HESH, MILK, and DAIM, 1992, Hamburg, Germany (Daim.org, 2003, p. 2).

The Swedish art historian Staffan Jacobson (1996) developed an approach, which appears to be concise and more easily understood. His seven-year study was based on subculture and socialization theories. He noted the origin of the mural images originated from other art traditions and have in turn been influenced by TTP Art - Tags, Throw-ups, Pieces. His database was collected over seven years from Scandinavia, Central Europe and on the East and West coasts of the United States. He wrote TTP is independent of other murals, which appeared in Philadelphia during the latter part of the 1960s in connection with the transition from gang graffiti to graffiti loners. It flourished in the New York subways during the early part of the 1970s and developed its own social, technical and aesthetic rules. The first European exhibition of what Jacobson (1996) labeled, “spray art” (p. 5) opened in December 1979, and by 1984, there had been seven large simultaneous exhibitions of spray art in Europe. Among the international painters represented in the galleries were twenty Americans and numerous Europeans from France, England, Germany, and Scandinavia. The June 2000 Guernsey’s Graffiti Art Auction (2000) in New York City was the first auction in the United

Figure 27. Pensamientos Indigenas (1985) Coco, 72 x 56 inches, aerosol on canvas, (Guernsey, 2000, p. 37).

Figure 28. Gajin Fujita, Los Angeles, 2001(Art World, 2001, p. 99).

Figure 29. Motley Crue, 2004, Gajin Fujita, acrylic and gold leaf on six wood panels (Art & Auction, p. 83).

States exclusively for the sale of street-mural art. Artists re-created original murals into formats suitable for presentation on inside walls. The projected value of Coco’s Pensamientos Indigenas (Figure 27) was estimated at $4,000 – 6,000.

Another sale, which included contemporary art by muralists, was the Fourth Site Santa Fe Biennial, Beau Monde: Toward a Redeemed Cosmopolitanism, scheduled to open July, 2002. Dave Hickey (2001), art critic, argued, “that what masquerades as ‘international’ at most biennials is really only regional art from all over the globe, with some ostensible meaning specific to the exhibition site. Cosmopolitan means to be a citizen of the world rather than of a place. It values adaptability and accommodations of cultural idioms to one another. I want to deal with the impurity of cultural overlap, not the purity of local culture” (Art World, p. 99). This “impurity” is illustrated by Los Angeles tagger, Gajin Fujita’s work (Figure 28) that melds graffiti with Japanese Edo paintings. This mural is on an exterior wall of the Site building. Within the next three years Fujita exhibited his second solo show in New York. Rosenberg (2004) described his painting, “Fujita, 31, combines imagery from traditional Japanese literature, theatre and art with that of the brash visual culture of East Los Angeles. . . . With growing recognition and demand for his work, Fujita has tagged his territory in the art world” (p. 83). Motley Crue (Figure 29) was among the fifteen paintings sold before the exhibit opened. The buyers were from Asia, Europe, and the U.S. In four years his prices increased fourfold. This painting sold for $28,000. By far the largest arena for the dissemination of graffiti art is cyberspace. One Internet site, Legal Styles, is offered in several languages. Based in Hamburg, Germany, it includes twelve pages of murals by various artist selected from the Halls of Fame. These murals are almost indistinguishable from many in the United States. They follow the same styles, use of color, and content. The murals by Daim are liberally spread throughout this lengthy website. Daim (2000) stated, “The quality of somebody is also documented by the longevity of his work. Continuity is a criteria [sic], alongside of quality and quantity. The decisive point is to stand out of the mass of mediocrity. . . . Bombing Cyberspace can not ever be expected to replace getting your hands dirty but it has definitely become a facet of the writing culture” (p. 2). Among the advertisements for art on the Internet is an establishment comparing murals to other decorations stating they are cheaper and you get original art. “All works are hand-painted, no reproductions” (Paintings, Wall Coverings, Murals, 2000, p. 1). They will paint on any surface: brick, stucco, metal, aluminum, or canvas. They suggest the canvas because it can be rolled up and moved with you. Any size mural can be painted, it may be shipped anywhere,

Figure 30. City Sanctuary (Ultimate Lego Book, 1999).

and can be applied like wallpaper. They finish with “Remember, nothing is impossible with a mural!!” (p. 1). With this expansion of writing overseas, European art dealers have become aware of the movement and appear to be very receptive to the new art form. Publishers have joined the world market for graffiti related material. The Ultimate Lego Book (1999) published by DK Publishing, contains instructions for erecting objects using Legos. One of the illustrations (Figure 30) is City Sanctuary, a building in LEGOLAND California Miniland complete with a “colorful spray-can-style mural”(p. 2). There is no doubt that Frankel and Wilson (1996) in Off the Wall – The Best Graffiti Off the Walls of America have expanded the definition of local. Within this short concise history the suggestion has been made that graffiti is “the vernacular of an era… unedited thoughts written from the heart (or lower).” It gives a more accurate account of man and “encourages cognition on man’s condition” (p. ii). The site of each witticism is documented (Figure 31).

Figure 31. 1995, Atlanta, GA (Frankel & Wilson, 1996, page 11, Figure c).

Figure 32. Cave Art, Gary Larson (Wiener Dog Art, 1990, p. 51).

Gary Larson has been an icon of the humorous for decades, in the United States, as well as abroad. His humor extends across the panorama of our lives and addresses the serious to the mundane. With this cartoon (Figure 32) Larson assumed his readers are aware of and have knowledge of cave murals.

References to graffiti at the beginning of the 21st century are readily found. The Internet (http://www.hiphop-network.com/articles/grasffitiarticles/criticaltaxonomyofgraff.asp) has numerous sites covering a wide range of information about murals in many countries. These web-sites contain many photographs of murals in full color. The murals are to be found on street walls, buildings, buses, trains and water storage tanks. Murals appear to have become the focus for numerous forms of artistic endeavor. The activity of the artists painting murals in America has been echoed in other parts of our rapidly shrinking world. These murals tended to be the product of an individual or a group of like-minded individuals, thus complying with the Crockcroft, Weber, and Crockcroft (1977) definition of community-based murals. As Norman Mailer (1974) wrote, “It is the name that is the faith of graffiti. What has happened to the name at different places and at different times is the story of graffiti” (p. 36). Susan Phillips (1999) continued, “Since the advent of hip-hop, teachers in art classes rarely can get kids to work on elaborating anything but their names in their artwork” (p, 16). Art historian Maria A. Phillips (1999) concluded, “It wouldn’t surprise me at all if historically these marks are what characterize the end of this century more than any other art form” (p. 54).

CHAPTER 3

Contextual Information

The Murals of Gainesville, Florida

The city of Gainesville borders on the Interstate 75 corridor in north central Florida. In the summer of 2000, Gainesville had a population of 144, 122 (Gainesville, Fl Chamber of Commerce, June, 2000). This included 44,276 students at the University of Florida (University of Florida, Registrar, 2000), 12,726 students at Santa Fe Community College (Santa Fe Community College, Registrar, 2000), and 350 students at City College (City College, Registrar, 2000). Gainesville is also the home of the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, Florida Museum of Natural History, Fred Bear Museum, and numerous smaller museums and galleries within the university systems. The Hippodrome State Theatre, AcrossTown Repertory Theatre, All Children’s Theatre, Gainesville Community Theatre, and the Curtis M. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts provide additional cultural activities. The Ben Hill Griffin Stadium and the Stephen C. O’Connell Center are the major sports centers in the area. There are four large hospitals and numerous commercial and industrial enterprises located in Gainesville. The city has a long history of being liberally dotted with murals on the walls of buildings and retaining walls alongside thoroughfares. Local murals and graffiti have been painted by a wide range of individuals, from the rank amateur to the professionally trained artist. Numerous surfaces, both public and private, are decorated with large murals, usually covering the entire side of a building, or a highway overpass. These regional murals abound in a variety of settings, and offer the community an opportunity to view the diversity of the artists.

These four entities - the Florida Department of Transportation, Alachua County, the City of Gainesville, and private property owners - have provided a most lively, and often heated, arena for debates on the control of the large surfaces available for murals in the Gainesville area. The latest Florida State statute that encompassed graffiti is Senate Bill No. 444, Chapter 98-93 enacted October 1, 1998 (Appendix A). These are the Florida laws setting forth the description of the act and the penalty for writing graffiti, and the ultimate graffiti law in Florida when a county or cities have not passed adequate local legislation. Interstate 75 is owned by the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT). The 1956 Federal Aid Highway Act (FAHA) mandated 90% of the cost of the Interstate Highways to be covered by federal funding and 10% by the state (Interstate Highways, 1999). The retaining walls of the overpasses of I-75 are adjacent to Gainesville, outside the city limits, but within Alachua County’s domain. This places the overpasses under the aegis of the FDOT and Alachua County. State Road 441 (13th Street) is owned by the FDOT and intersects Gainesville from its north to its south perimeter. The 13th Street overpass is well within the city limits and is contiguous to private property. The FDOT and the City of Gainesville debated its ownership when it began to crumble in 1998. It was declared private property. It had not been built per state specification of the FDOT for Concrete Barrier Wall Section 521.1-7 (2000). State Road 121 (34th Street) and the retaining wall are owned by the FDOT. In 1980, 34th Street was widened into six lanes with a wide grassy median from South West 2nd Avenue to Archer Road. In the process of the expansion a small hilly section of the University of Florida Golf Course had to be utilized. The apex of the adjacent hill was about twenty feet above the street level so it was cut away and a 2.2 mile long soil-retaining-concrete-barrier wall was built on the east side of 34th Street. Ownership of The Wall has never been debated. It is owned by the Florida Department of Transportation. The Alachua County Board of County Commissioners continue to update the County’s Comprehensive Plan. The Statutes and Regulations that governs comprehensive planning in the State of Florida are set forth in Chapter 163, Part J1, Florida Statutes, and Rule 9-J5, Florida Administrative Code (Comprehensive Planning, 2003). The only Alachua County Ordinance that encompassed graffiti was Chapter 18, Section 354.18 – Violations; enforcements; remedies. Judicial Remedy one states, “The county may institute a civil action in a court of competent jurisdiction to establish liability and to recover

64 damages for any injury on the water, or property, including animal, plant, and aquatic life, of the county caused by any violation” (p. 1). With the well-defined state laws as a guideline for the county and city governments few laws seem to have been enacted on these levels. The 1960 Gainesville Municipal Code Section 18-20 (11) addresses graffiti on areas designated as a park: “It shall be unlawful . . . to write on, draw on or otherwise deface, damage, remove or destroy any park facility or any part of the park grounds” (Prohibited activities, 2002, p. 1). No mention was made of other city-owned areas. The Gainesville City Commission has continued to revise its 1960 code outlining Art in Public Places, making it consistent with the State of Florida Comprehensive Plan. The City of Gainesville/Alachua County Art in Public Places Trust is composed of five members appointed by the board of county commissioners. They are responsible for “development and implementation of the city public art master plan, through the Art in Public Places Trust program and for the management of the art in public places trust fund” (Art in Public Places, p. CD5.5-2). In order to clearly define works of art the 1989 Gainesville Ordinance No. 3509 defined art as

The unique product of a skilled artist (or group of artists) who works according to aesthetic principles and includes, but is not limited to, architectural enhancements, special landscape treatments, paintings, sculpture, engravings, murals, mobiles, photographs, drawings and works in fabric. The following shall not be considered works of art: mechanical or reproductions, commercially produced items, architectural rehabilitation or historic preservation. (Art in Public Places, p. CD5.5:3)

One of the goals of Art in Public Places has been “to increase public access to art and the aesthetically designed environment, and to promote understanding and awareness of the visual arts in the public environment . . . to enhance the climate for artistic creativity in our community” (Section 5.5-1). Alachua County and The City of Gainesville have attempted to monitor and control commercial advertisements and other artistic endeavors painted on buildings, free-standing- signs, as well as street-side retaining walls. The Florida Department of Community Affairs Division of Community Planning requires all county and local governments in Florida to adopt comprehensive plans which are then reviewed by the Department of Community Affairs to 65

insure they are consistent with state laws (Objections, Recommendations and Comments [ORC] Reports and Notices of Intent [NOI], 2003). Large murals were planned for the principal thoroughfares through Gainesville at I-75, 13th Street, 34th Street, and other areas. These murals have been planned and painted on state, county, city, and privately owned property. Each mural site has its own specific set of onerous problems. Keep Alachua County Beautiful (KACB), a local organization, has promoted landscape projects in Gainesville. Since 1996 they have attempted to formalize the mural painting process by locating sites for murals, soliciting funds, acquiring permits, and selecting the designs and the artists. The murals in Gainesville include:

- Undersea Design on I-75 Exit at Archer Road by Matt Hawkins, paid $31,405. - Countryside of Alachua County on I-75 Exit at Williston Road by Ed Rowe, paid $31,405. - Native Flora and Fauna on I-75 Exit at Newberry Road by Robert Ponzio, paid $25,000. - Remembering September 11, 2001 on 13th Street Overpass by Matt Hawkins, paid $7,000. - Florida’s Natural Wonders on 13th Street by Matt Hawkins, Cheryl Robbins, Linda Pollini, Jennifer Mydock, and Ed Rowe, fee unknown. - Alligator on Tower Road and Newberry Road by Shane Abshire, paid $2,959. - Here Today on Town Tire, NW 6th St. by Harimandir Khalsa, paid $5,850. - Tribute to Robert Love on the Ice House by Matt Hawkins, paid $3,000 (Robert Love was a local resident admired for his thirty years working as an ice chipper at Mr. George’s Ice House in Gainesville’s Grove Street neighborhood). - Anti-tobacco on Steinmart Wall by area students, paid $3,000. (Stripling, 2002; Arndorfer, June 27, 2000; DeYoung, 1998)

All of these murals are currently in progress or completed except the Robert Love mural. No funds from the taxpayers have been utilized. These murals have been funded by local 66

donations and the paint and materials donated by Suntec Paint. The price to paint each square foot was about five dollars. A special sealer, Armor Glaze, applied over the finished mural renders it impervious to further painting. Any attempt at over-painting can be removed with water. This sealer was produced in Canada and retails for $100 per gallon (Ciotola, 1998, DeYoung, 1998, and Brokerage firm, 2000) Haase (1990) reported the oldest extant graffiti in Gainesville, Florida, are on the walls of the Haile House. This cracker-style house was built in 1855 by Serena and Thomas Haile on their Kanapaha Plantation. The graffiti on the walls dates to 1893 and include recipes, names of visitors, and poems. During this period, university students often held parties in the old house. Their writings on the walls have been preserved. Fehadu Kiros (1998) reported, “Today, the graffiti is [sic] a written testimony to life in another century” (p. 1D). Nathan (1997) reported that Jim Evangelista painted many memorable murals in the late 1970s throughout the city, which have remained in situ. He no longer resides in Gainesville, but his murals remain, one on the 13th Street wall for more than eleven years. In 1986 he painted a surrealist fantasy mural depicting underground creatures, moles and dwarfs on a privately owned retaining wall on South West 13th Street. It remained intact until 1998. Unfortunately, the top of the wall on which it had been painted had been constructed using thinner concrete and in February 1998 it began to crumble after heavy rains (DeYoung, 1998, November 22). For permission to paint a mural such as the 13th Street mural on private property within the city limits, a Gainesville Building Inspections Department Permit is required. The Art in Public Places Trust encourages prospective artists to obtain Public Art Projects approval by the trust, but does not require it; it was a suggested review, not mandatory (Ciotola, 1998). The 34th Street Wall, State Road 121, is owned by the FDOT. A permit is required to legally paint on any state property. Even though a permit is required, it appears that many Gainesville residents are either not aware of the law, or do not care because it has not been enforced. Indicative of the prevailing local attitude was one student’s observation, “People have been painting on the wall forever. I have never known it was illegal. I wasn’t doing anything negative. I wanted to wish my friend a happy birthday, and the wall has always seemed to be a great way to do that” (Rosenthal, 2001, p. 1D). While an older resident replied, “Gainesville residents do not need to be told that painting on the wall is illegal. Students should know not to deface property that is not theirs. There is a permit process for those who want to paint on the wall. Other than that, it is simple. If it’s not ours, don’t mess with it” (Gainesville Sun, 2000, p.

1D). FDOT can issue permits to those who want to paint on the wall, but so far, the only permit issued has been for the student memorial panel WE REMEMBER. The Gainesville Police, the city of Gainesville, and the University of Florida Student Government have coordinated their efforts to preserving The 34th Street Wall as an area for self- expression. Lt. Ed Book stated that the Gainesville Police Department, “wants to promote cautiousness when residents paint The Wall. Three main concerns are the safety of painters, maintenance of the area and the leaking of leftover paint into the sewers, which leads to the aquifer used for drinking” (Rosenthal, 2001, p. 1). Lockett (2001) stated, additionally, that the University of Florida Student Government has been cooperative with the city by encouraging students to dispose of paint, avoid parking on the sidewalks, and practice “wall etiquette.” Community members are also concerned about the appearance of The Wall and the safety of the area. The group has suggested ways to paint The Wall while making the area cleaner and safer. Student Government Lobby Director Natalie Hanan said, “We agree that painting on the wall is a privilege to students and members of the community. It is a part of Gainesville life, and it should be preserved” (Moskovit, 2000, p. 1). Tim Lockette (2001) reported that the local governing bodies believe that allowing the painting on the 34th Street Wall will probably decrease graffiti in the rest of the city. The only Alachua County ordinance that encompassed graffiti was Chapter 18, Section 354.18 – Violations; enforcements; remedies. Judicial Remedy one states, The Gainesville Sun, (1998) quoted, “Local governments will be able to impose mandatory sentences on people who break graffiti ordinances. Police can arrest people for writing graffiti even if the officers didn’t see the crime occur” (October 2, p. 1). The first statement is correct (State Statute 806, Appendix A). The second statement was not a part of that statute. The juxtaposition of the two statements leads the reader to assume the second statement was correct. This exemplified the inaccurate, inflammatory and subjective reporting of the local news media. It fueled the local debate concerning the legal ramifications of graffiti laws. This interpretation of possible police action fell under the realm of what Criminal Justice Authorities deem “probable cause” (2003, pp. 1-5). This opened the door for protection under the First Amendment to the Constitution. The scenario was set for the possibility of a lengthy Fourth Amendment legal battle followed by the enforcement of a possible prison term. Court dockets would have undoubtedly been even more overcrowded. The punishment, 60 days to 5 years, combined with the present-day problems of overcrowded prisons would certainly be exacerbated if the graffiti artists were added to the present day prison population. 68

Bob Arndorfer (1997) observed, “Over the years there has been little or no vandalism to it, which suggests that it has had an impact on the community that means something to many people” (p. 2). Arndorfer (2000) quoted Jeanne Rochford, executive director of Keep Alachua County Beautiful, as stating, “the overpass on 13th Street is the gateway through which most people come into Gainesville. It’s the first impression people have of the area, and we wanted to try and beautify it” (p. 1D). Several murals have often been referred to as “city cultural landmarks,” “the city’s corkboard” and “city scrapbooks” by the local media (Martin, 1998, p. 1). It was not unusual for the local newspaper, The Gainesville Sun, and the university students’ newspapers, The Independent Alligator and Diversions, to devote their front pages to recent news and community reactions to these murals. A photograph of The34th Street Wall was one of four photographs displayed on the University of Florida College of Fine Arts Twenty-fifth Alumni gathering invitation. One huge masterpiece on The 34th Street Wall was painted by five international teams - Trash Can Design, Fx, FBI, Stick Up Kids, Bomber, and Ghetto Bastard Frankfurt- (Figure 48). One panel of this masterpiece has continued, since June 1998, to appear on the Daim website.

“NEW LITANY OF LAWS GOES INTO EFFECT – THERE ARE NEW WRINKLES IN HOW WE DEAL WITH

HMOS, DUIS, STOLEN CABLE BOXES, GRAFFITI, FERRIS WHEELS…” (p. 2B), was an Associated Press release out of Tallahassee, published October 1, 1998, in The Gainesville Sun. The headline was in 36 point font. The last paragraph read, “Local governments will be able to impose mandatory sentences on people who break graffiti ordinances. Police can arrest people for writing graffiti even if the officers didn’t see the crime occur.” Senate Bill No. 444 (Appendix A) took effect October 1, 1998. Since that date, the local populace and law enforcement agencies have maintained their continuing level of compliance - laissez faire. Their reactions may be likened to that of a very tolerant mother toward her darling little willful child. Rosenthal (2001) reported although organizations and agencies such as Keep Alachua County Beautiful, the Gainesville Police Department and the city of Gainesville Public Works Department have worked on graffiti abatement projects in the past, the graffiti on The 34th Street Wall has never been removed. Finally, in October 2002, Gainesville adopted into the city Code of Ordinances Section 17-1, State misdemeanors. The local law now proclaimed, “It shall be unlawful for any person to commit, within the limits of the city, any act which is or shall be recognized by the laws of the state as a misdemeanor, and the commission of such acts is hereby forbidden” (p. 1). We now see

69 it has taken over twenty years for the city of Gainesville to enact State Statute 806.13 which had existed prior to 1988. The Gainesville area will probably continue to be a vibrant ever-changing community. Every year the influx of new students provides a large pool of possible talent. The areas currently existing invite the serious, as well as occasional artists to express themselves. Local newspapers provide a continuing record of the art on the local walls. The existing state, county, and city codes cover numerous aspects of the graffiti scene in Gainesville. The areas that have traditionally been covered with graffiti murals are often the scene of impromptu parties and get-togethers for the expanding student population. This population of students is within the age range seeking a group of like-minded individuals with whom to partake of the local spirits and party into the early morning hours in the dormitories, rented apartments, streets of the student ghetto or most any place where two or more are able to congregate. The local merchants definitely profit from the large student population, and visitors attending sports affairs, musical events, and many other events. Local news coverage of the area has not produced a list of unlawful graffiti artist perpetrators. The city of Gainesville appears to have a magnetic force capable of attracting as many as 85,000 to one event. The city nods but never seems to sleep. Well-prepared artists and the proverbial spontaneous painters appear to display no hesitation to paint on The Wall anytime of the day or night. About the only time a police officer makes an appearance near The Wall is in passing. Jacqui Turner (1996), a staff writer for the local student newspaper stated, in reply to vandalism of the We Remember panel, "There is a policeman who lives right across the street. . . . Police drive by there all the time so I don't know how it could go unnoticed" (p. 1). The city and local student groups supply large aluminum trashcans placed strategically on each end of the painting area. Thirty-fourth Street is one of the more traveled thoroughfares in the city and the speed limit adjacent to The Wall remains the same as other roadways within the city limits. Pedestrian safety measures are typical to the volume of traffic. No traffic signs on the roadside, traffic lights, pulsating lights, or speed bumps have been installed. This scenario does not seem to indicate police or resident dissatisfaction with the ongoing painting activity. A decrease in graffiti has been noted in the city. An individual, an artist, or viewer, may experience The 34th Street Wall, Gainesville, Florida, in numerous ways. It may be while walking nearby, driving a four-wheeled vehicle or riding a two-wheeler, perusing the printed news media, observing various visual media, or through personal communications. The messages on The Wall may be seen through many filters: 70

(1) through experiences of one’s past, present or possible future, (2) religious belief systems, (3) political persuasions, (4) ethnic origins, (5) nationality identifications, and others. Where Feldman (1994) encouraged a narrow exclusive method by which to collect descriptive data, Anderson and Milbrandt (2005) expanded his approach to be more inclusive while seeking knowledge of us within an ever-expanding world. It has been my experience that Feldman’s exclusivity definition would not include many individuals and groups within the marginalized and/or ignored in our society. I was taught/trained to “Be seen and not heard.” The scene was set to disenfranchise many of the right to have an opinion, to disagree, choose a career, seek higher education, select a life-mate, or ultimately to not be allowed to dream. During my lifetime I have observed this exclusivity fall by the wayside to be replaced by wide vistas beaconing us to enter in to discover and revel in our oneness with all mankind, past, present or future. To divorce ourselves from exploring our environment, near-by or distant, delays and ultimately prevents inner growth, realization, and the exhilarating happiness just to be alive, breathing, and upright. Reaching out to embrace our neighborhood, our country, the world, and ultimately outer space, provides experiences and insights into others and us. It fulfills the definition of community-based art education. That which, we observe and experience, become part of us as we become a part of them. A group may become a single entity, but still retains its individual space. One such cooperative effort described by Harvey (2002) occurred in an Ohio preschool/kindergarten. The visiting artist, Joe LaMantiam, collaborated for two weeks with the students and the local community to build a “collaborative sculpture”(p. 796). During this time, LaMantiam lived with one of the families to partially reduce the $350 (plus expenses) per day, and as an extra benefit, got to know the families and students better. The students and the community collected the recycled objects needed. This seems to fall within the realm of Anderson's (1983) observation, “If it is assumed that culture gives rise to art, which in turn contributes to the redefinition of culture, then contemporary street murals, in representing the otherwise unrepresentative elements within the society, are making an important contribution to the American culture and the American heritage. They represent alternatives” (p. 338). The themes of The 34th Street Wall murals document life from birth to death; times of celebration and sadness; political, religious, and social issues; and personal insights into a variety of issues affecting our daily lives. The scope of interest stretches from the local to the state, national, and international arenas. The messengers of this informal dialogue may well be recent 71

immigrants or individuals whose ancestors were among the earliest pioneers of this country. The ancient murals of other cultures around the world have been woven into the fabric of the murals on The Wall. The murals of The 34th Street Wall are truly a community endeavor, a community stretching around and across the world – a global community. This global culture is rapidly shifting from text-based communication to image-saturation communication (Freeman, 2003).

Description and Analysis of The 34th Street Wall

Figure 33. The 34th Street Wall, Gainesville, FL (L. K. Lane, 2003).

The Wall on Thirty-fourth Street, State Road 121, lies adjacent to Interstate 75. Thirty- fourth Street extends for six and one-half miles within the city limits and borders the southwest corner of the University of Florida Campus. Its western perimeter drops down about twelve feet to street level. This drop-off is held in place by a twelve-foot high, eight-inch thick concrete wall. The entire length of the 920-foot retaining wall (Figure 33) rests on the apex of a small hill. Thirty-fourth Street is west of and parallel to The Wall. It is a two-way, six-lane thoroughfare divided by a wide grassy median landscaped with flowers, shrubbery, and five sable palm trees. The Wall, as well as 34th Street, is the property of the Florida Department of Transportation (Diversions, 1999, p, 10), The 34th Street Wall is composed of forty-six individual concrete sections (panels), each twenty feet long. The central thirty-six panels are twelve feet high at their highest points and the seven panels on each end taper down to a height of eight inches (Figure 33). The Wall was constructed in accordance with the Florida Department of Transportation (DOT) specifications for a Concrete Barrier Wall, Section 521, 1-7 (DOT, 2000). Steel-reinforced Portland cement

concrete was poured into removable forms and allowed to cure for seventy-two hours. The surface of The Wall was hand-trowelled, producing a smooth fine textured surface relatively free of defects such as pinholes, pockmarks, and blemishes (521-3.3). Above The Wall are a five- foot-high-chain-link fence and an evergreen hedge providing a partial preventative measure for wayward golf balls. Between February 8, 1998 and March 24, 2000, the forty-six panels of The Thirty-fourth Street Wall, Gainesville, Florida, were photographed weekly. During these 110 consecutive weeks there was the potential for a total of 5,060 photographs. This projected total was decreased due to my prior commitments and mishaps during the photography process. This resulted in a total of 4804 photos of panels to be analyzed. Each photograph was dated, numbered, and filed. Panels were numbered 1 – 46 from the north end to south end. The information compiled from each panel included: color, content, length of time on The Wall before being over-painted, and the number of images requiring multiple panels. Presently published data on the colors, the longevity, and the content of the images in any specific site over an extended time have not been available. In the search for a truly comprehensive analysis it was deemed of importance to collect data covering an extended time – at least two to five years. The final time frame for data collection was two years and two months. The first aspect of the panels identified and enumerated was color. Historical information about color has been difficult to find. The English physicist Phillip Ball (2001) noted, the art historian John Gage, in 1998 observed the tools of art are studied less than other aspects of art history. Ball appears to have filled a portion of this void when he combined the history of art and science in Bright Earth: Art Invention of Color. He traced the history of color from the earliest sources on the walls of caves to the present day and described the chemical properties. After listing the colors on each panel for the first two weeks it became readily apparent which colors were most commonly used. A numerical count was assigned to each of fourteen colors: white, blue, black, red, orange, yellow, green, purple, blue green, pink, gray, brown, gold, and silver. These have been arranged in a descending order of occurrence. Colors selected by artists seem to be determined by personal preference and the available materials. The total number of panels will not equal 4,804 because multiple colors may appear on each panel. This factor also affects the percentage of total colors.

Table 1 Distribution of Colors

Color Number Percentage of times of total a color was used on panels a panel - does not imply only that color was present on the panel

white 3237 67 blue 3060 63 black 2372 49 red 2369 49 orange 1305 27 yellow 1117 23 green 701 14 purple 577 12 bluegreen 380 8 pink 239 5 gray 227 5 brown 138 3 gold 93 2 silver 69 1

The Distribution of Colors chart (Table 1) showed the number of panels on which a specific color appears on The 34th Street Wall in Gainesville, Florida, during a 110-week period in 1998-2000. The color white was found on 3,237 of the 4,804 panels photographed during that time. It was used for the background, added for highlights, or in numerous other ways by the graffiti artist. Ralph Evans (1964), an industrial consultant on color, suggested colors are selected depending on their contrast with the color of the background. The choice of color may also be the result of the technology available at the time. The variations of a color on The Wall are only limited to the imagination and inventiveness of the painter. The largest percentage of panels (Table 2) on The 34th Street Wall were considered miscellaneous graffiti. The 1,099 (21.71%) Hip-Hop panels on The 34th Street Wall parallel the development of both the national as well as the international development of Hip Hop Art – Tags, Throw-Ups, and Masterpieces/Pieces. The Wall has been liberally covered with Tags – renderings of the artist’s initials or nicknames using numerous calligraphy styles, flourishes, and stars. This celebration of the individual mirrors our culture’s proclivity for honoring the individual’s uniqueness and existence. 74

Table 2 Table of Content

Number Percentage Content of total of total panels

Misc. Graffiti 1099 21.71

Birthday 890 17.50 Miscellaneous 676 13.35 Love 314 6.23 Death 296 5.84 Graduation 270 5.33 Advertisement 213 4.20 Sports 139 2.74 Celebration 97 1.91 Valentine 85 1.67 Anniversary 60 1.18 Political 59 1.16 Sororities 53 1.04

Religious 48 .94 Fraternities 33 .65 Foreign Language 18 .35 Marriage 3 .03 Halloween 3 .03

It would be most difficult to attempt to quantify the occurrence of Hip-Hop Art on The 34th Street Wall. It was not unusual for two or more Throw-Up images to be on one panel.There were 412 panels covered principally with Throw-Ups. Throw-Up letters are found in several styles: Bubble, Broadway, Leaning, and Complex, among others. The Bubble Letters in Figure 34a are reminiscent of those by SE3, Figure 18. Two curved downward pointed teardrops introduce the large fat yellow letters tightly curled into donut shapes. The thin black lines define the inside borders and the wider black lines on the left of each letter hint at another dimension. The large Bubble Letters S, C, and D cover about ½ of a panel and are easily read even though they were painted over existing graffiti instead of the typical cloud of they were painted over existing graffiti instead of the typical cloud of white.

(a) Panel #14, November 11, 1999. (b) Panel #22, April 18,1999.

Figure 34. Throw-Ups on The 34th Street Wall.

The letters CAPO in Figure 34b incorporate many of the attributes of the Broadway style of Bubble Letters. The black-outlined white letters are slightly tilted and flow to the right into a caricature of a man’s hairless head. A large rectangular box, coming from his mouth, contains, the names CAPO, RENZ, PSZ, UAW, DUSK, and VICER. Within the borders of each letter are gray and black figures. One appears to be a y-shaped figure and the other a circle with a handle, much like a hand-held magnifying glass. Above the top of the letters are the words “One man two ” and below the words “You Big Time.” This image covered one entire panel. The Leaning Bubble Letters of Figure 34c have been placed on a black cloud among gleaming four-pointed stars across one panel. The disjointed letters L, O, V, E seem to have been splashed across a starry night. One small outward-pointing arrow rests atop the letter L. Below, the letter E is the word “starlite.” The pale blue, bright blue, and gray letters outlined with black have a striking appearance. The precise lines of the letters definitely appear to be the endeavor of a well-schooled artist. The choice of colors, the images, and the overall arrangement of the images are decidedly appealing to the visual senses.

Although the complexity of Figure 34d rendered it unreadable to this researcher, it is interesting and attractive. The white curvilinear letters outlined with black have been liberally decorated with orange stars christened with the black number 11. The juxtaposition of the letters in the composition creates a tight circumscribed image on the midnight blue cloud. Thin fragile curved lines appear to be surface cracks on five of the seven letters. Black script and tags surround the central image: “I CAME 2 G-VILLE & THREW UP, SEEK, LIES, KAE, JESSICA, and REAL7.” This image covers about one-half of Panel #33. These earlier forms of Hip-Hop Art continue to attract the attention of artists. The images and techniques appear to be simpler to execute than the later Masterpieces/Pieces, but in actuality require a rather high level of expertise and talent. The mental processes necessary to recognize and identify the initial images, and this technical expertise necessary to render the image, mix the aerosol paints, and identify the image's most effective placement are all vital aspects of Hip-Hop Art. Throughout the history of The Wall it has continued to maintain a magnetic attraction for local as well as visiting artists. Visiting artists appear to have common reasons for traveling to Gainesville in order to display their artistic talents on The Wall. The most common are the Hip- Hop artists with their pre-planned compositions in sketchbooks. One of these artists was Gabe Lacktman, an architecture student previously enrolled at the University of Florida who later transferred to Florida International University. Each time he traveled back to Gainesville he made an effort to paint a panel on The Wall. By late March 1998 he was painting his eleventh panel on The Wall; and he estimated that he had about thirty dollars invested in each piece (L. K. Lane, personal communication, July 1998). Black, white, red, orange, and blue are the most

Figure 35. Gabe Lacktman (Panel #43, July 18, 1998).

common colors utilized in his work. His interlocking curvilinear style of lettering was easy for the researcher to identify throughout the next two years whenever he visited the area. In early July 1998, Gabe was back. He had again painted a mural on The 34th Street Wall (L. K. Lane, personal communication, July 1998). The background of this image (Figure 35) begins at the bottom with a deep, almost red- orange color graduating upward to a flat lifeless yellow. The yellow ends in upward pointing shapes reminiscent of the trees in a burnt-out forest. These forms are silhouetted against a flat lifeless, pale green akin to the yellow area below. A darker green color runs across the upper border cascading down across the paler green area ending in forms similar to the upward central area of the panel. The two curving outer images seem to rear up and arch inward in an effort to protect the interior. The top and bottom elements of the inner figures seem to arch in a manner to retain and hold inward the energy of the image. Pink and gray tubular writhing leech-like images move in and out of the figures. A yellow crown with seven points rests at a jaunty angle atop the two figures to the far right. This image demonstrates the visual impact of one artist's work on The Wall, but the visual impact of a group of artists' work is impressive, even to the casual viewer. By far one of the most impressive groups of graffiti artists to paint on The Wall was the European Crews -- groups of individual artists working together. Their impressive three-panel blue-green appeared in late June1998 (Figure 36). This mural had a black background and covered panels #35, #36, and #37. Prior to this painting, the center panel had been dedicated to Jimmy Hennessey, a teenager tragically killed in late 1997. In an act that seemed to show professionalism and respect, the artists reserved a small rectangular area, 10" x 12", in the left top corner to recreate Jimmy's epitaph. This was the same color as the background in an apparent attempt to decrease the possibility it would distract from the mural; but with sufficient finesse to

Figure 36. Panels #36, 37, and 38 (June 13,1998). 78

not detract from its message. This graffiti art was so impressive that it remained on The Wall for about five months, when it was over-painted. The mural was first observed on June 13, 1998. It remained in almost pristine condition until October 23, 1998, when the first signs of random over-painting were observed. Within three weeks the original painting had been obliterated and the panels painted white. The huge image (Figure 36a) on the first panel of this mural appears to be an elongated rectangular shape resembling a window. The yellow-to-red-to-yellow background within the blue-green framed area seems designed to be a mellow light spilling out the words TOAST, DARE, SWET, DARCO, and BOMBER. The letter D is identifiable with its lower right corner- thrusting forward as if to point out the remaining letters of the name. The letter I originated behind the letter D and is over three times larger than the D. It is leaning to the right and abuts the next letter, A. When the yellow color of the letter I and of the letter A meet on an oblique line high above the letter D it introduces three new linear shapes, continuing the sharp thrust of the figures to the right as if to indicate more information is in that direction. The colors of the linear shapes appear to be an attempted transition of the previous colors to the next colors used in the name Diam. The letter A is fractured into several pieces and spills out and downward to meet the M, which lies on the diagonal. The letter M almost touches the bottom corner of the letter D and sprawls upward pointing to the right. Each letter has been painted in two or three colors with the first color of a letter being the same as the color of the preceding letter it abuts or overlays. DIAM thrusts out of a rectangular blue-green form akin to a window. The name appears to spill out from the light within and across and down, around, meeting, and overlaying the huge downward pointing arrow. The arching golden arrow appears to originate far to the left, then twists in space, curves downward, providing support and a background for the name. The lower barb of the arrow contains the words “© ’98 –DAIM” and far above the image near the top border “–TCD-FX-FBI-SUK-GBT-.” These five European Crews were identified by Daim (2001) as TCD (Trash Can Design), FX (no meaning), FBI (no meaning), SUK (Stick Up Kids), and GBT (Ghetto Bastards Frankfurt). Each individual artist may be a member of one or more of these crews. The next image (Figure 36b) in this panel seems to explode from the edge of panel #35 outward into panel #36. Letters of the name ALEX are placed individually on the vertical axis in order to provide the off-center support for the image. Arching pale blue arrows appear to shoot out, curving back downward, pointing to the name as if to say “I’ve been stretched to my limit but I will return to what and who I am - SELSER, and ALEX will support me.” Seven, mostly 79

Figure 36 (a). Panel #36 (June 13,1998).

Figure 36 (b). Panel #37 (June 13,1998).

Figure 36 (c). Panel #37 (June 13,1998).

Figure 36 (d). Panel #38 (June 13,1998).

pastel, colors flow across this image. Most are clearly circumscribed by a black line. Several petals of three flowers seem to be peeping out from behind the upper edge. The six small to medium size fields of pure yellow appear to encircle and restrain the letters. One small “eye” appears to keep a watchful eye on the viewer and the petite figure in the adjacent circle. The diameter of the large circular figure (Figure 36c) is about eight feet, ¾ of the height of the panel. It has a background, which graduates from deep purple to pale lavender and is encircled with a white line. A small human figure with a bald head appears to be looking upward in a manner of supplication. He is wearing a shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, short pants, and brown lace-up shoes. In his hand, he appears to be holding a can of spray paint. To the rear of this image is an elongated covered vehicle with two sets of tires in the front and the rear and two headlights on the lower section. The vehicle resembles a railroad car but has a rounded top. The words “still playing” are located at the right top arc and “stick-up kids” in the right lower arc of the circle. This refers to the SUK crew. Across the lower left arc of the circle is “BSC.” Crew member Tasik’s tag counterbalances Florida ’98. Only a small area of this circle extends over into the next panel. The last image (Figure 36d) is an abstract red form atop blue-green spiral bands and a large oval area. The lower part of the form has openings from which two figures, apparently male, protrude. The head, right shoulder, and an upper arm, with a bulging muscle, are protruding out of one hole and the right hand reaches out of a lower hole. The figure appears to be either attempting an escape or requesting something. The hand is turned palm up in a pleading, placating manner. Above these two figures are another flat form and three arrows. One arrow intersects the plane above the first figure’s head ending in a high arc, akin to a handle. The remaining two have curving tapered shafts and rest upon the upper form. The terminus of this plane of activity is a curvilinear image resembling the letter M. The energy of these forms leads to the white oviform in the background. A lone yellow tapered arrow directs attention outward to a five-pointed star outside within the blue field. Perhaps this star is the destination for all the attention. Above near the edge of the panel are the names STEFI & ANCI. Below and to the left is a complex image composed of a large downward pointing, tapering arrow. Two smaller arrows and other forms seem to be hitching a ride on the back of the arrow. Numerous aspects of this mural attract attention. The enormous size of the endeavor was obvious while the choice of colors added to its intrigue. The utilization of numerous arrows directed attention across, up, over, under, and through the images providing an opportunity to

experience the entire mural. Each area of the panels seemed to draw attention inward and then thrust it outward. The local newspaper reported,

A recent addition to the 34th Street wall has been gathering much attention, and the mere fact that it’s still there after almost a month is worth mentioning. The wall, which serves the community as a creative outlet is known for it’s [sic] impermanent art in public places as well as its tribute as a memorial. This large colorful painting appears to be airbrushed and brings art on the wall to a new level. The wall is along a stretch of SW 34th Street. (Pais, 1998, p. 4E)

This reference to “art on the wall to a new level” accurately describes works often seen on The 34th Street Wall beginning in the 1990s. These panels by the international group, led by Daim, are posted on the Internet along with other international art. In a 2002 interview, Daim, aka Mirko Reisser, stated he was from Hamburg, Germany. In an earlier 1997 Art Crimes and Digital Jungle interview, Daim began by stating “Graffiti is about presenting yourself, about writing your name as often and noticeable as possible” (p. 1). He discussed his belief that the sides of trains are perfect as a canvas because many people see them. The painting gives him “adventure, excitement, trust in your friends, risk and an enormous activity, the feeling to shock and provoke to get respect from your fellow writers, to have expressed yourself, to have worked creatively is something you can rarely get from today’s society” (pp.1-2). Daim explained that the letters are a “graffiti-specific code” (p. 2). He added that this does not mean he has reduced himself to mean he is merely letters. He has spent years perfecting the four letters in his made-up name and inanimate objects such as fish, insects, and architecture. He was a student in Lucerne, Switzerland, and worked independently without contact with teachers or other students at the school, except to receive instruction about different techniques and materials. He labels this “free art” (p. 4). His aim was to transform space. His medium is pencils, markers, acrylics, and spray-paint. He does not use an airbrush. Daim has experience in copper plate engraving, photography, and sculpture. Salvador Dali influenced his earlier work, Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet his later and current work. Daim (2002) stated, “Graffiti is a worldwide language of youth. There is nothing absolutely negative in graffiti. Being chased by the police, narrowmindedness [sic] of people not liking graffiti and envy among those in the scene are just things that go along with it and keep motivating me to go on. In the past few years 83

many things have changed for the better, so ’m [sic] sure it’s only going to improve”(p. 6). His Table 3 Multiple Panel Images website contains a chronology of his career. This site also documents the numerous foreign countries he has visited to either meet Percentage Number Number with others to paint and discuss his art, to of All Panels, of of exhibit in galleries and museums, or to sell in 4,808 Panels Images auctions. The third aspect of The 34th Street Wall .02 2 99 to be quantified was the incidence of one .0068 3 33 continuous image across multiple panels. As .0018 4 9 Table 3 of 157 images extend over more than .0006 5 3 one panel. Ninety- nine (.02%) of the 4,804 .0006 6 3 panels extended across two panels and thirty- .0012 7 6 three (.0068%) across seventeen panels or 340 .0004 8 2 feet. These very small percentages of the .0002 9 1 incidence of multiple panel compositions .0002 17 1 reflect the increased difficulty associated with the endeavor, time, and material needed, and the ability to be concise. The central panels of The Wall are concrete retaining wall. The wide sections of The 34th Street Wall appear to one of the criteria selected for the parameter of a large composition. These appear to b the most desirable panels on which to paint. The artist is able to reach most areas while standing and/or using a small stepladder. The last seven panels on each end are irregularly shaped, and taper downward into a triangular shape. These fourteen end panels are not suitable for a large image or text. They appear to be painted by “scribblers” and contain many write-overs. Their small area renders them more difficult to paint than the central panels. In order to paint these smaller panels, the artist either sits on the pavement or is forced to bend sharply over. These end panels require far less paint and time to paint. Their size and low proximity to the pavement make them rather difficult to be read by a passing motorist. The images in Figure 37 extended across more than one panel. They were stretched across 2½ panels for a length of fifty feet. Their rendering is reminiscent of a black and white cartoon. 84

Figure 37. Panels #15, 16, & 17, July 16, 1999.

The overlapping curvilinear images appear to progress across The Wall. The only hint of the artist’s identity is found in the animal depicted in the middle of the images. The words ASA IS HERE are in the lower right of the animal's mouth. Undoubtedly a myriad of concealed messages lie within, known only to the artist. Most of these murals are ephemeral - here today, gone tomorrow. An image may endure for only hours. For the purpose of research, The Wall needs to be viewed, photographed, and documented as often as possible in order to not miss a masterpiece. The low percentage of multiple-panel compositions reflects the increased difficulty associated with the endeavor. The duration of stay for some images was, undoubtedly, less than one day to one week. Table 4 totals for the number of weeks do not add up to 112 because more than one artist may have had an image on The Wall during the same week. These factors skewed the number of images in this study only to those photographed on most Fridays for 26 months, between February 8, 1998 and March 24, 2000. An image was photographed if it had some write-overs, but only if that write-over did not substantially cover the underlying image. The largest group photographed remained on The Wall for less than two weeks - 3,945 (82%) of the 4,804 total. This group included all categories of content. The smaller number of images, 732 (15%), was mainly Hip-Hop images and memorials to returning heroes and untimely deaths. One three-panel (Figure 36) image by DAIM, MATE, SHARK, TOAST, DARE, SWET, and DARCO remained for 18 weeks. The longest an image, We Remember, remained on The Wall was over 770 days. We Remember (Figure 41) was on The Wall February 8, 1998 and has remained there, even to the present time. The second largest percentage (17.58%) of the panels on The 34th Street Wall was to commemorate birthdays. These greetings appeared to be painted predominantly by females 85

Table 4 Duration of Stay (Figure 38). The Happy Birthday panels usually fall into one of three general types: lettering, lettering and a caricature, and

fanciful fauna and flora. In the first panel (38a) each of the Extent Number colorful letters has different design painted within its border. of of These designs are rather simple, but the overall effect Weeks Images 2 379 encourages the eye to explore each letter individually rather 3 202 than the entire image in its entirety. The balloons at the far 4 100 right echo the numerous colors used in the lettering. Setting 5 51 the number 23 at an angle between the lettering and the 6 36 balloons provides more interest in the overall composition. It 7 22 was obvious the artists (Sticky, Mark, and Kim) preplanned 8 17 9 12 this panel. This type rendering of Happy Birthday is more 10 17 commonly seen on The Wall than the next two panels. Panel 11 16 38b has only four colors - red, black, and blue – on a stark 12 2 white background. The artist did not sign this panel. The 13 3 simplicity and positioning of the letters around and below the 15 1 central image of a smiling, long-haired female extends a 16 2 18 3 message of happiness. In contrast to panel 38a, the 19 2 information on panel 38b is easily read by the passing 20 1 motorist. All the information can be obtained at a glance. 25 1 What better greeting than a 20' x 12' Happy Birthday painted 33 1 on The Wall so all your friends are able to ride by and see it? 112 1 Across the lower border of Panel 38c is a stretch of

bright green foliage. In the top right corner the face of a happy sun smiles down and out on the cleverly conceived caterpillar. The positioning of the circles for the body gives it a feeling of movement, a slow sinuous movement encouraging the viewer to enjoy the nuances of the figure. The hairs on the caterpillar’s back resemble plush green “grass.” At midpoint on each side are three figures, on the left are three black and yellow bumble bees and on the right are three butterflies. This panel appears to be dedicated to a six-year-old child and is signed on the lower right Mom, Jessie, and Chris. The third group of panels on The 34th Street Wall is Miscellaneous, 676 (13.35%). Those themes painted on The Wall not falling into the other seventeen categories were placed in 86

(a) Panel #43, Oct. 23, 1998.

(b) Panel # 31, Jan. 28, 2000.

Figure 38. Birthday panels, The 34th Street Wall, Gainesville, FL.

Miscellaneous. These included military themes, timely advice, student projects and announcements. Panel #29 (Figure 39a) is rather striking due to the stark contrast between the black and white, the large downward white triangle covering ½ of the surface area of the panel, the large downward white triangle covering ½ of the surface area of the panel, and the image of the F-15 Eagle jet thrusting upward on the right side. Down each side of the black areas are the names of the officer candidates painted black, within seven white circles. The candidates were Joe Howell, John Owens, Robin Schumaker, James Nichols, Dustin Hart, Aaron Gill, Ian Twambly, Phil Vallera, Mckayla Clarke, Amber Macak, Jared Jones, Dan Minkow, Tyson Sailor, Jason Coker, and Pat Boswell (J. D. Nichols, personal communication, January 10, 2004). The creation of this panel (35b) is an annual ritual of the ROTC (Reserve

(a) Panel #29, Nov. 7, 1998. (b) Panel #44, April 18, 1998.

Figure 39. Military panels, The 34th Street Wall, Gainesville Florida.

Officer Training Corps). The BMDT (Billy Mitchell Drill Team) of the ROTC at the University of Florida represents the Arnold Air Society. This precision drill team performs a close-order drill with M1 Garand assault rifles (unloaded) at an annual national competition in New Orleans, marches in Mardi Gras parade and the University of Florida homecoming parade, and other functions on and off the campus (Cadets-Cocurriculars, 2004). The BMDT is sponsored by the Arnold Society, an organization for training future Air Force leaders in high moral, physical, and mental attitudes (Arnold Air Society, 2004). The ROTC provides scholarships to cover tuition, textbooks, lab fees, and a $250-$400 stipend each month. Upon graduation the student becomes a commissioned officer in the U. S.

Military (Programs & Scholarships, 2004). The limited number of yearly ROTC scholarships makes them highly competitive in universities and colleges across the nation. Painting Panel #44 (Figure 35b) is an annual ritual of the Dale Mabry Squadron of the Arnold Air Society of the ROTC. The white circle enclosing the black silhouette of a man and a watchtower represents the POW-MIA Flag (Prisoner of War, Missing in Action). Below the circle are a laurel branch and the words “You are not forgotten.” The initials of the five artists down the right side have not been identified. In 1971 the wife of a MIA soldier and the National League of Families began the lengthy process to honor the prisoners of war and the missing in action in Southeast Asia. The result was this flag which was later recognized by the 101st Congress in U.S. Public Law 101-355. This flag has been the only flag ever displayed in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda and the only flag, other than the official flag of the United States, to fly over the White House. Numerous other sites have been designated as official sites where the POW-MIA flag is to be displayed (Pow-MIA families, 2004). The annual ROTC and POW-MIA panels on The 34th Street Wall were not the only military-related panels. Large ships painted in silhouette across two panels announced a homecoming to local families and friends. These are reminiscent of the huge advertising banners stretched across streets high above the traffic. The panels have not generated the negative attention reminiscent of the 1960s and 1970s anti-war and anti-military factions. The panels remained on the wall over a week before being painted over. Panel #13 (Figure 40) is a timely admonition not to operate a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol. The black and red print and figures against the white background enables the viewer to easily read the information. The three parallel curving lines at the rear of the automobile successfully indicate a speeding, out-of-control vehicle. A red circle with a diagonal line across its center is painted over a full cocktail glass with an olive. Painting the word STOP, the speeding car, the circle with the diagonal line, and the acronym S.A.D.D. in red emphasizes the warning. S.A.D.D. began as Students Against Driving Drunk in 1981. National chapters in middle schools, high schools, and colleges were considered dominant in peer-to-peer youth education and prevention. In 1997 the name was changed to Students Against Destructive Decisions in order to add other destructive behaviors such as violence, suicide, substance abuse, and under- age drinking (History of SADD, 2004).

In panel #14 (Figure 40) the background is painted white with red, and the gold letters and figures are outlined with thin black lines. Below the large red-lettered words “DONT MAKE LOVE WITHOUT A GLOVE” swims a sad confused bleary-eyed spermatozoa. Both the message and the swimmer are framed by two curvilinear symbols. The larger red looped figure on the left is a symbol for a movement to find a cure for AIDS – Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome. The meaning of the gold letters a, e, and d positioned on a vertical plane to the center of the far left and the gold figure located in the lower right corner are unknown. The message to

Figure 40. Panels #13 & #14, February 27, 1999.

prevent conception and sexually transmitted diseases is apparent. The juxtaposition of the two panels in Figure 36 is rather interesting. Both panels may have addressed the subjects of the last parental advice students received before leaving for the University of Florida – drinking, driving, and sex. Each year the local community has been made cognizant of HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) Awareness Week and the annual World AIDS campaign. In 1998, it was the eleventh year events were publicized by paintings on The Wall. The week of events began with the painting of The 34th Street Wall by Gainesville artist Joe Colton Weider (Chandler, 1998). One concern of interest to Gainesville, the University of Florida, and its student population, as represented in a mural, has been the resident bat population. Cindy Spence (1997) reported these bats were Mexican/Brazilian free-tailed and Southeastern bats. At dusk literally thousands are seen darting about feeding on insects. These bats sought refuge in the many old buildings on the campus. Johnson Hall appeared to have an abundance of resident bats that lost their home when it burned in December 1987. These displaced bats, estimated at about 14,000, moved into the UF track and Field Stadium, in addition to other buildings on campus, including 90

Figure 41. Panel #10, March 12, 1999.

student housing. In 1991 an alternative roost was constructed near Lake Alice – a small lake on the edge of campus that is home to several huge alligators. At first the bats ignored this housing but in late 1995 finally began to move in. By 1997 it was estimated that about 60,000 bats lived in the house. The bat house was designed to accommodate 250,000 bats! In 1997 the University of Florida announced a plan to move the bat house and build dormitories on the site. A concerted effort by students and local citizens petitioned the State Cabinet to keep the Lake Alice Wildlife Area and the University of Florida bat house unchanged. Figure 41 effectively proclaims their victory. The stark black figures and message on a white background echo the sentiment. Even the bats seem to have smiling faces. The large frowning head with the square glasses reflects the losers. The bat house has garnered much interest, not only to the general public but also in the academic sphere. Spence (2004) reported that meager research has been done on bats. This colony of bats is purported to be the world’s largest. The Boston University’s Center for Ecology and Conservation Biology, the North American Bat House Research project at Bat Conservation International in Austin, Texas, and Auburn University continue to utilize the site for research.

Figure 42. Panel #4, August 27,1999.

The bat house usually has at least one hundred visitors every day. Spence says, “On any given night, you’ll see people out there for four or five hours. They’ll pack a picnic and watch the gators at Lake Alice and then before they go home, they’ll cross the street and watch the bats. It’s a good, family activity and it’s becoming part of the heritage of Gainesville” (2004, p. 4). Within the 13.35% miscellaneous panels are those panels needing no explanation. Figure 42 is a plaintive plea by vegetarians for the viewers to refrain from eating meat. The plea is a direct frontal approach accessible to all readers. The pink pig on the left and the black cow on the right have large white almost comical eyes. Three words, “Friends Not Food!” are sufficient to deliver the message. The use of pastels provides added softness to the appeal circumventing a harsh loud demand not to eat meat. Additional messages on The 34th Street Wall panels included,

All I want in life’s a little bit of love to take the pain away (Panel #45, February 4, 2000). Politics is the art of deception (Panel #29, April 23, 1998). On this day I married my friend, the one I laugh with, live for, and love (Panel #3, December 27, 1999). So you think your family is dysfunctional? (Panel #9, January 15, 1999). Hi Mom and Dad - Please send $ (Panel #5, October 22, 1999). We must secure the existence of white people and a future for our children (Panel #39, June 11, 1999).

In March 1999, eighth graders from St. Patrick’s Catholic School painted one panel as part of a class project “Art in Me.” The attending three teachers took turns video-taping the students painting the panel (Figure 39). The class had previously completed a clay project and listened to religious music. The 12’ x 22’ area of the panel provided ample space for each student to express the art in them, inspired by their previous clay and musical activities (Personal communication, March 1999). The usual problems of dripping paint and overactive student imaginations were non-existent.

Figure 43. St. Patrick’s Catholic School, 8th grade school art project.

By far, the most attention and news coverage has been garnered by the We Remember panel (Figure 44) painted on The 34th Street Wall during the later weeks after the mayhem in Gainesville and has remained in situ to this day. This community-based type graffiti represents the local reaction to the horrific murders of five students during the weekend of August 25-26, 1990. This panel (#24) is in the center of The Wall. It has a black background enclosed by a narrow white border. The far left one-third of the panel has the words We Remember painted in red, outlined with white, placed on a downward diagonal plane. On the right one-half of the panel are the names of the murdered students – Sonja Larson, Christina Powell, Christa Leigh Hoyt, Tracy Paules, and Manuel Taboata. Below is a small red heart outlined with a narrow white line. Barbara Walker (1996) traced the history of the heart throughout history,

The maxim that a pregnant woman carries her child ‘under her heart’ began with the Egyptians, who believed menstrual blood that made the child’s life descended from the mother’s heart to her womb. The maternal heart, then was the source of the child’s life. Which was why a mother called her child ‘heart’s blood.’ (p. 375).

The choice of the colors red, white, and black are symbolic, within our culture as well as other cultures. In the United States black has long been a color associated with death and mourning, red associated with blood, and white with life. The large black space in this panel

93 represents the sudden overwhelming sadness of death. To set the memorial apart on The Wall, George Paules, Tracy’s father, framed the panel in coquina rock in 1993. As the eye travels to the right it becomes evident that placing the names of the five victims opposite We Remember makes them the object of the remembering, a recipient of the remembering. The names are painted white, white for the lives so violently taken away. Below the names is a small red heart represents the sudden overwhelming sadness of death. To set the memorial apart on The Wall, George Paules, Tracy’s father, framed the panel in coquina rock in 1993. As the eye travels to the right it becomes evident that placing the names of the five victims opposite We Remember makes them the object of the remembering, a recipient of the remembering. The names are painted white, for the lives so violently taken away. Below the names is a small red heart outlined in white, Walker’s “heart’s blood.” It's meaning is dependent on the context, culture, and time in which it appears. Gainesville Police Captain Sadie Darnell and others formed the Keepers of The Wall, an informal group dedicated to watching over The Wall memorial and created in honor of the slain students. In the ten years this panel has existed it has seldom been over-painted, activity which rapidly resulted in a public outcry and volunteers to repair the damage. A floral wreath and an engraved marble grave marker were later placed at the We Remember panel. These two objects evoked outrage when they disappeared in October 1999. On the tenth anniversary of the tragedy, layer after layer of paint was removed from We Remember panel and it was repainted. The median in front of the panel was landscaped with flowers and five fully-grown palm trees, and then dedicated in a memorial service attended by the public and the victims’ families. Professor Willis Bodine, of the University of Florida's School of Music, performed his composition Solemn Fanfares on the Century Tower carillon located on the nearby campus. This music had been composed specifically for the tenth anniversary of the tragedy. The victim’s families thanked the

Figure 44. Panel #24, January 9, 1999. 94 community “for wrapping your arms around us these grieving years. . . we have learned about letting go” (Arndorfer, 2000, p. 1A). The most interesting aspects of the We Remember panel are its longevity on The Wall, continued public interest, and the local news coverage. Senior student Andrew Cox (1996) wrote to The Independent Alligator,

As I drove by the wall on 34th Street, I saw the beginnings of the Scott Nations memorial, and it occurred to me that the hideous wall serves only two purposes. The first is, of course, a legalized area for teen-aged brats and sorority girls to doodle nonsensically about so-and-so’s birthday or so-and-so’s “mack daddy” status. Its other function is similar to that of the Vietnam memorial, except while the memorial recognizes everyone, the 34th Street Wall is limited to tragic young lives cut short. I’m not saying that I don’t feel the sorrow, that I am not reminded of my own delicate mortality when I think of these people, butI am saying that there are more appropriate outlets to express one’s grief than the 34th Street wall. Ninety percent of the wall is incoherent doodling with absolutely no aesthetic value, ten percent (and growing) is a blackened reminder of people gone. In time, these percentages will be reversed (ask the four kids who began painting over a memorial section about the permanency of the black sections) and the 34th Street Wall will be the wall of Death, intermittently interrupted by “Jonny rules.” I think a dull white wall would work nicely. (p. 1)

A total of 139 (2.74%) of the panels on The Wall were sports-related. Most often, messages were admonitions to the University of Florida athletes to outscore the visiting rivals and celebration if or when the local teams or athletes bested the competition. Local high schools were also the subject of a panel. The national custom of naming team mascots after differing Native American Indians included such names as Indians, Braves, Redskins, Chiefs, Warriors, Mohicans, Fighting Illini, and Seminoles. This has resulted in the accusation of racism. King and Springwood’s Team Spirits (2001) consisted, of fourteen essays by activists and academics. They explore the origins of Native American mascots, the message they convey, and the reasons for their persistence into the twenty-first century.

Figure 45. Panel #32, May 16,1998.

The 270 panels on The 34th Street Wall celebrating graduation comprise 5.33% of the 4,804 panels photographed. Panel #32 (Figure 45) is successful in several aspects: the colors selected, the playful images, and the overall appearance. The yellow print and the frisky Dalmatians are easily seen against the stark black background. The largest Dalmatian proudly wearing the blue mortarboard on the left is probably Doctor Dad. Two smaller and one medium size animal on the right appear to be the well-wishers. The smaller ones are in a playful mood while the center one with the red cap seems to be in an exhausted haze. This one is probably the wife of Doctor Dad. Popular graffiti on The Wall is readily deciphered and understood by the viewing public, especially university students. One panel is especially representative of the humor and pathos in a university town. It addressed the growing social problem of consumer debt on college campuses. This August 1998 panel (Figure 46) has a white background and purple block printing stating “Eight Years . . . It’s About Bloody Time!!” A mother painted the panel describing her

Figure 46. Panel #18, August 8,1998.

daughter’s eight-year struggle to complete a Bachelor’s Degree in Education. The daughter accumulated such a large debt on her credit cards she had to stop, get a job, and pay her debts before she could continue her education. Her efforts were rewarded eight years after she began at the University of Florida (L. K. Lane, personal communication, August, 1998). On the lower left corner of this panel are words of wisdom: “Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.” This admonition may well be a warning that no matter whether you leap the unicorn or the unicorn leaps you, in the end is the possibility and probability you lose. Equated with a credit card, you lose. The predatory marketing policies of the credit card industry are a concern of all Americans with sons and daughters. As early as 1980 an advertisement boasted in TimeMagazine, “you can have it the way you want it with Visa. Only Visa gives you so many ways to pay Worldwide” (p. 17). Robert Manning (2000) reported at a June 1999 National Press Club press conference on student credit card debt held in Washington, D.C. The Consumer Federation of America (CFA) released the first major academic study of student credit card debt. It was based on in-depth interviews and cross-sectional survey data. Manning observes, that by 2000 Citibank was the largest issuer of “kiddie” cards: cards issued to university students, usually without the parents’ knowledge or consent, preying upon adolescent vulnerabilities and youthful ignorance. Credit Card Nation: The Consequences of America’s Addiction to Credit, Manning (2000) stated, “In less than a decade, Citicorp had risen - like a phoenix - from the ashes of near-corporate insolvency to the largest and most profitable financial services conglomerate in the world. And it owes extraordinary resurrection to one of its least glamorous divisions: retail banking and, especially, the almighty credit card” (p. 82). Manning (2000) observed that credit card companies direct their most aggressive marketing at the 250 largest public schools. Along the way they may threaten lawsuits against uncooperative universities, make use of corporate lobbyists, provide major donations, and submit lucrative marketing contracts. The best example of this practice is the seven-year, $16.5 million deal with the University of Tennessee. The American Savings Education Council (ASEC) and the employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) sponsored the Parents, Youth & Money Survey by Mathew Greenwald & Associates (2001). This study showed 55% of parents roll over credit card debt every month. This method of money management often sets the stage for their offspring to spend money they do not have. Financial analyst Lynn Brenner (2002) stated about 20% of college students with credit cards carry a balance of at least $10,000. This acceptance of large monetary debts has changed during the last half of the 20th century. In Credit Card Nation: The Consequences of 97

America’s Addiction to Credit, Robert Manning concluded, “One of the most profound social and cultural revolutions of the post-World War II era [was] the ascendance of the consumer credit society, which both masks social status differences and exacerbates the widening chasm of U.S. post industrial inequality” (p. 2). Ninety-seven (1.91%) of the panels on The Wall were celebrations of all types. One of the largest, covering two panels- 40 feet, proclaimed “Eid Mubarak” (Figure 47). The background of this huge mural is black with a white border. The crescent moon enclosing the five-pointed star emblem of Islam is placed to the left. Over, under, and between the letters are words written mainly in Arabic with a scant few in English. Above and to the right are the words “Islam on Campus.” In the far right corner is a small copyright mark. All the letters were first painted with a white color, and then over-painted with a pale yellow color over the words Eid Mubarak. This is a Muslem phrase used as a greeting to congratulate each other on holidays. It literally means “Blessed Festival.” This panel was displayed in January in honor of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Moslem year and a period of daily fasting from sunrise to sunset (Islam, 2004). Fifty-nine (1.16%) of the 4,804 panel themes on The 34th Street Wall were deemed political - local, national, and international. The 1.16% political panels are far fewer than those Susan Phillips (1999) reported in Wallbangin’ – Graffiti and Gangs in L. A., “Political graffiti have always been some of the strongest forms of graffiti in the world . . . . Many represent the voice of the politically discontented, either individually or those who have formed themselves into groups . . .. at its base are the state politics in which everyone participates - for or against” against” (p. 51). Phillips considered all community-based graffiti in Los Angeles in the political category if it is “viewed from the inside” (p. 53).

Figure 47. Panels #25-26, Eid Mubarak, January 23, 1999. 98

Figure 48. Nazi political graffiti art on The 34th Street Wall. (The Gainesville Sun, April 23, 1999, p. 1B).

National and international political graffiti art appears frequently on The Wall. In early April 1999 neo-Nazi graffiti artists painted a birthday greeting on The Wall (Figure 48) in imprecise German, to Adolph Hitler: “Alles Gute sum Geburtstag dem Fuhrer. Seig Heil. den 2 Abril [sic]” (“All the best to the birthday of the leader. Hail Victory, April 2). Within hours Inge Conradt, a local schoolteacher who had moved from West Berlin to Gainesville in 1968, had painted over the panel, revising the message to read “All the worst to the birthday of the leader. Hail Victory in hell.” Conradt’s reaction was the focus of news articles, editorials, and letters in the local newspaper,

If I had done this 60 years ago, it would have been certain death to paint something like that in broad daylight . . . . As I was painting, almost every car honked their horn. At that moment I had a revelation or epiphany. Suddenly, I felt what it was like to have been exposed in public. I thought that is how the Jews must have felt when they were paraded down town with signs around their neck. I suddenly felt this pain that I only could imagine before. (The Gainesville Sun, April 23,1999, p. 1B)

Conradt’s sentiments were echoed by Toby Madison two days later, “I know this country is built on freedom of speech, but there is a limit. Public, written birthday salutations to Hitler is akin to yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre. Thank you again, Conradt, for your brave action” (p. 3A).

In 1998, paint was splattered all over a Jewish star that had been painted as part of an Israeli flag on The Wall. Two Israeli groups at the University of Florida are a part of the Jewish Student Union, Gator Public Affairs Committee and Hamagshimim. There also is the Israel Student Association under Volunteers for International Student Affairs. Rafaela Monchek, Jewish Union President, stated, “With a campus of more than 5,500 Jewish students, many of whom have close associations with Israel, it is hard to believe that anti-Semitism still exists on this campus” (The Independent Alligator, Summer, 1998, p. 4). Politically inspired graffiti includes colorful panels of national flags, messages, and an occasional e-mail address to contact. Several appear each year on anniversaries,

- Greek Independence, (Panel #16, March 24, 2000). - Long Live Pakistan, (Panel #31, May 23, 1998). - Israel, (Panel #32, April 18, 1998). - Cuba Libre, (Panel #20, January 19, 1998). - Puerto Rican Week, (Panel #16, February 27,1999). - Caribasa Week, (Panel #12, April18, 1998).

The forty-eight religiously inspired panels encompassed a wide latitude of religions – Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and other belief systems. This .94% of the panels was readily identified. Those symbols representing the religions were the dominant image in these panels, i.e. cross for Christianity and menorah for Judaism. By the late 1960s, the corner of University Avenue and 13th Street, in front of the University of Florida, and the grassy area in front of Library West, on the University of Florida campus, were gathering places for the disciples of Hare Krishna. Every Wednesday students were treated to a free meal prepared and served by the saffron-draped, beaded followers of Krishna. The cymbals rattled and the shaved headed disciples could be heard chanting in the area. Many hungry students lined up for a dish of what was locally known as “wallpaper glue delight.” The white background of Figure 49 creates a striking base for the golden words “CHANT & BE HAPPY.” The red shadow lines on the letters serve to better define the letters and provide the bright red to declare HARE KRSNA. The black circle to the right has two circular penetrating white eyes with black pupils. The red area around the white eyes curves upward and outward, giving an owlish appearance. The red and white lines around and between the eyes add to this 100

illusion. The red and white smiling mouth belies the fierce eyes. The golden sun on the left and the golden figure hanging from the bottom of the letter B appear to be elements of the original painting because the same golden paint has been used on both. At the lower left of the black face ids the tag JAN. Reporters John Huber of the San Jose Mercury News and Lindsey Gruson of the New York Times (1988) traced the arrival and development of the religious cult, the Hare Krishna, labeling it “the institutionalization of evil in the name of a god” (p. xiii). In 1965, Bahajtivedanta Swami Prabhupada arrived in New York with $7 in Indian rupees and a telephone number. By the time he died in India in 1977, had founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). Worldwide, ISKCON had followers numbering in the tens of thousands and owned over two hundred temples and farms in sixty countries. Their coffers held tens of millions of dollars. The blue cowherd boy God, Krishna, was "the all-knowing, all-

Figure 49. Panel #20, June 6,1998.

powerful, omnipresent, energy-giver to the cosmos” (p. 79). Many of the followers were hippies, those rejecting Christianity and their parents, antiwar types, and dreamers wanting. The graffiti on The 34th Street Wall has continued since it was constructed in 1980. Local reactions fall somewhere between loving The Wall and hating The Wall. This does not include those unaware of its existence or those not considering it worth the cerebral effort. The Wall is covered with mindless markings to sophisticated images of value in our ever-changing multicultural environment.

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CHAPTER 4

Interpretation, Conclusions, Implications, and Suggestions for Further Research

Interpretation Part 1

The 34th Street Wall, Gainesville, Florida, has served the community as a creative outlet, having provided an ever-changing landscape with the ability to arouse a gamut of varying emotions within the viewers. As Table 4 has shown, images on The Wall have, for the most part, been in constant movement, coming and going like bees to a honeycomb. The We Remember panel continues to serve as a tribute and a memorial for the victims of the 1990 Gainesville student murders. It also serves as a healing agent, a balm for the souls of those left behind. One mother stated she visited The Wall on the anniversary of her son's death. She said when she mourned at the cemetery she was alone, but when she came to The Wall she felt others mourned with her. She appeared to have received a measure of solace through sharing her grief. The graffiti art on The Wall is readily deciphered and understood by the viewing public, especially university students. Controversy arises because the wall serves as a community mirror through which each person sees a particular reality. The creative process appears to be of as much importance as the content. Local artist William Schaaf (2001) observed,

The daily changes, the confluence and diversity of energy enlivens the wall with an on-going force (of nature) of human affirmation . . . . And by the way, it’s all about the We Remember panel the energy; the expression of

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Table 4 Duration of Stay ideas through a long established form. . . . Many regard the wall as a bastion of free expression. And some began to see it as Extent Number something like holy ground after one panel of of of the wall was used as a memorial to the five Weeks Images college students killed in 1990 by Danny 2 379 3 202 Rollings (p. 1). 4 100 5 51 The themes of The 34th Street Wall murals document life 6 36 from birth to death; times of celebration and sadness; political, 7 22 religious, and social issues; and personal insights into a variety 8 17 of issues affecting our daily lives. This scope of interest stretches 9 12 10 17 from the local to the state, national, and international arenas. The 11 16 messengers of this informal dialogue may well be a recent 12 2 immigrant or an individual whose ancestors were among the 13 3 earliest pioneers of this country. The ancient murals of cultures 15 1 and religions around the world have been woven into the fabric 16 2 of the murals. Signs, symbols, and images of those cultures 18 3 19 2 continue to exist and have been translated onto The Wall. The th 20 1 murals of The 34 Street Wall are truly a community endeavor, a 25 1 community stretching around and across the world – a global 33 1 community. Freeman (2003) stated this global culture is rapidly 112 1 shifting from text-based communication to image saturation

communication. Harriet Senie and Sally Webster (1992) in Critical Issues in Public Art – Content, Context, and Controversy stated, “The role of public art in creating a national identity, contending that each work can only be understood by analyzing the context in which it is commissioned, built and received” (p. 1). This function of public art has been impacted by the diversity of ever increasing dissimilar groups in our society. The concept “melting pot” has long been used, primarily in American education (Grigsby, J. E., 1977; Litsinger, D., 1973; Mason, R., 1988; Sadker, D. P. & Sadker, D. M.,1988).

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The concept of “melting pot” has, of late, been revised to “salad bowl.” The amalgam still exists but has been altered to include the idea that enough of our original differences remain to provide us an independent identity within a group. The United States has long been unified, but this does not deflect or subtract from our individualism. How many times have you asked or been asked, “Where did you come from”? Americans will readily reply, “ I am an American.” Only rarely is the answer a foreign country, even if both parents immigrated from the same country, the same city, the same town. We are a salad bowl. Yes, we recognize, retain, and value our genetic and nationality differences, but it is far easier to see our commonalties than our differences. Images and dialogue representing these cultural differences appear side by side on The Wall, remaining for a time, unaltered, to be observed by passing motorists. Learning how to relate to another's life experience opens doors to understanding on a higher and wider level. We have to start somewhere to understand each other in our ever- shrinking multicultural world. To understand another’s life experience and to develop a relationship requires awareness of their needs and desires on many levels, from assisting a newly-arrived foreign exchange student to providing critical care in extreme danger. K. M. Cox, a career Army Special Forces veteran, explains how to develop a relationship with the natives in a combat zone. The first way was to treat the village, especially the children and pregnant women, with medical care, then food, and protection from the enemy (CSM K.M. Cox, personal communication, December, 2002). Information gleaned from the art on The Wall can be offered and received in the same manner. Extrapolating the scenario within this mountain village under hostile fire to our newer immigrants, relating to them in more positive and productive manner. Attempting to relate to and understand another on a very basic and humane level should provide a foundation on which to build the future. "Win their hearts" with kindness, nurturing, and protection and then approach their minds. Painting on The Wall provides an important outlet for many young people in the community. Its ever-changing state represents what is going on at the core of this small university city. Another benefit is the decrease of graffiti around the city. In 1850, the United States Census reported no foreign ancestry group with a population reaching one million. The Irish ancestry group numbered 962,000; the Germans 584,000; Great Britain 379,000; Canada 148,000; France 54,000; Switzerland 13,000; Mexico 13,000; Norway 13,000; Holland 10,000, and Italy 4,000. By 2000, this influx of future Americans had exploded.

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The 2000 United States Census reported four foreign ancestry groups with populations exceeding one million. The largest of this group were from Mexico 7,841,000; China 1,391,000; Philippines 1,222,000; India 1,007,000; Cuba 952,000; Vietnam 863,000; El Salvador 765,000; Korea 701,000; Dominican Republic 692,000; and Canada, 678,000. These statistical records have been collected and preserved by our government, providing proof of the continuing diversity of our national heritage. With these American citizens of foreign ancestry and birth, the availability of affordable foreign travel, and the vast amount of information available via the World Wide Web, foreign cultures are more accessible than ever before. The American psyche and lives are inundated with differing cultural aspects within their lives. We need to be aware of the cultures throughout the world in order to understand, appreciate, and interpret our surroundings, our world. Awareness connects us to humanity through time. It connects us to our own lives and helps us come to grips with ourselves. Each of our ancestors passed on a vital part of themselves – their genetic code. A part of each of our mothers, since the beginning of mankind, is inherited through our mitochondrial DNA. Human evolution reveals the progress we have made and how our extended environment has become better. This desire and need has remained a part of our psyche and continues to be present. Claude Lévi Strauss (1969) stated the human mind remains the same whether it be savage or civilized. Howard Gardner (1982) summarized, “The savage mind is the mind of us all. The 34th Street Wall murals differ from mainstream art because they reflect the vitality of people defining and redefining themselves beginning with the present and extending into the past utilizing their former and inherited culture. Foreign student groups reminisce and display their allegiance to their country of origin (Figure 47). These panels seem to shout, “We are here, but still remember we came from there.” The combination of this defining and redefining coupled with the now, the immediacy of current events (Figure 45), and the relative short life of the mural result in a vitality and scope not offered by static visual art forms. The location of the wall and its purpose provide a certain degree of assurance that the neighborhood will not change radically in the near or distant future. Each culture had a special way of expressing itself depending on its own perception, imagination, and capability to use and transform the available natural resources. Changes in technology have decidedly influenced the aesthetic presentation of murals. Earlier murals were

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always done with a brush “but spray cans and felt markers have changed everything” (Cesaretti, 1975, p. 67). Until the recent arrival of the spray paint can (Los Angeles in 1984), chalk and charcoal were the historical media of choice. Chalk and charcoal are more easily transported and hidden in pant pockets than a paintbrush and paint can; and have the ability to cover a wide variety of surfaces such as rough and smooth stone, wood, and stucco. Romoysky (1976) believed that before the spray-paint can era, young people used shoe polish, applied with the rectangular sponge applicators on these containers. Fleming (1974) noted that synthetic colors, commercial paints, acrylics, and various textural additives have supplanted the earth pigments and natural oils used for centuries. The primary paint container utilized on The Wall has been the commercial paint spray can. The official trash preventive measure was the placement of several large metal containers along the length of The Wall. This appears to have been mostly successful. The range of colors used on The Wall included many not available commercially. The most common source for paint was Walmart, where an 11ounce can cost $.99 plus tax. These were primarily red, blue, green, yellow, white, orange, and black. The other subtle variations of color were obtained primarily by one method - paint blending. An example of this use of present-day technology, the imagination, and inventiveness is the Danish graffiti artist RENS. In 1987, he developed a technique to blend cans of spray paint to obtain a wide range of pastel colors. RENS has claimed ownership to 75 tones of blue! Figure 50 demonstrates how the 40 mm plastic tube found in the center of a ballpoint pen has been modified to become the connection between two cans of spray. Both ends of the plastic tube have a 2.5 mm x 1.5 mm slot cut out. To mix the color baby blue, REN suggested, a can of white paint be placed in a freezer, in order to decrease the pressure in the can. Meanwhile, a can of dark blue spray paint is gradually heated to increase the pressure. Above 50º C (122º F) the can has a tendency to explode! The aforementioned tube is connected to the freezing can of white paint and the hot can of dark blue paint. The white can is placed on top of the dark blue can. Gently pressing the cans together forces the hot dark blue paint upward into the cold white can. This procedure may be repeated to achieve a specific color. Experimentation appears to be prime factor in producing a wide variety of blended colors not available on the open market. Problems arise if the paints are not compatible, the most common of which is thickness and lumps in the final mixture.

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Figure 50. Results of blended spray paint and mixing tool (RENS, p. 1, 2003).

Graffiti artist devised this ingenious method to expand the range of colors available to any painter with the desire, and courage, to attempt to add to their pallet. Many Hip–Hop graffiti panels on The 34th Street Wall glow with astounding color combinations. The trashcans on the pavement at The Wall inevitably contained aerosol paint cans. A weekly drive down 34th Street has been a visionary delight. Friends and acquaintances continued to be surprised at the beauty of the panels that have been photographed. My camera resides on the back seat of my vehicle with the maps and other survival paraphernalia. It is a rare occasion when The Wall does not possess a “winner.” Numerous locals continue to discuss “that really long” mural painted by the internationals in 1998. The Wall is on a major thoroughfare, with frequent traffic delays. The ever-changing messages and images on The Wall can make the trip memorable. It is surprising there seldom are rear-ended auto crashes on 34th Street in front of The Wall. The murals on The Wall reflect social, religious, political, racial, ethnic, gendered, cultural, folkloric, motivational, and aesthetic positions of the area, not to mention the ever-present inane “scribbler.” The information may be timely or outdated, personal, informative, controversial, or irritatingly frank. Everyone may paint on The Wall, anytime they desire. The messages on The Wall may amuse you, shock you, or make you shake your head in wonder. One huge foreign word which was on The Wall was so striking in appearance I was motivated to research its meaning. Analyzing the colorful Hare Krishna panel motivated me to read Monkey on a Stick by Hubner and Gruson (1988). The

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images present in graffiti murals are found emblazoned on a wide array of commercial products for all ages. Graffiti murals have had an interesting journey from the railroad car, to any surface that moved or remained static, to art galleries and auction houses, and to the colorful shirt on a “Hip” teenager. It is an art form of the people, by the people, and for the people. The graffiti art on The 34th Street Wall fits neatly into Anderson’s (1983) analytical schema, “social in its essence, and specific in terms of culture, or subculture, and place”(p.367).

Interpretation Part 2

The 34th Street Wall Survey Questionnaire The purpose of this survey was to explore the local community’s response to the murals on The 34th Street Wall, Gainesville, Florida, early in 2004.

(PLEASE CIRCLE THE APPROPRIATE ANSWER)

AGE GENDER Female Male

18-20 56-60 21-25 61-65 ETHNIC GROUP 26-30 66-70 31-35 71-75 Caucasian African-American 36-40 76-80 41-45 81-85 Asian American Indian 46-50 86-90 51-55 90↑ Other

EDUCATION OCCUPATION

(years) 1-5 13-14 6-10 15-16 11-12 17-18 19 or more

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Table 5 Survey Questions Results

AGE GENDER EDUCATION ETHNIC GROUP (Years) 15-20 1 Female 6-10 2 Caucasian 27 19

21-25 3 Male 11-12 10 African-American 3 11 26-30 2 15-16 4 41-45 4 17-18 10

46-50 4 19+ 4 56-60 4

61-65 4 66-70 2 71-75 4 81-85 1

Table 6 Profile of Participant

OCCUPATION HOME LOCATION Homemaker 4 Within city

Musician/artist 4 limits 10

Teacher 2 1-3 miles

Librarian 1 outside limits 4

Retired 6 4-6 miles Fireman 2 outside limits 6 Student 1 10-15 miles 2 Nurse 3 outside limits 3 None listed 7 25+ miles 7

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Locations utilized for selecting the participants for this survey was arbitrary - settings such as the physician's waiting room, the grocery market waiting area, the blood bank waiting room, the local library, the music school waiting area, and the homes of neighbors and families. The majority of people asked complied while a few “didn't want to be bothered.” As shown in Table 5, the thirty subjects surveyed for this research ranged across a wide age span: 15 – 85 years. This included 3% between 15-20, 16% between 21, 30% between 31-40, 56.6% between 41-65, and 23% between 66-85. This included 63.3% females and 36.6% males. Their years of education included 6.6% with 6-10 years, 33.3% with 11-12 years, 13.3% with 15- 16 years, 33.3% with 17-18 years, and 13.3% with over 19 years. Table 6 shows ten percent were African-American and 90% Caucasians. Table 6b shows a wide range of occupations: 13.3% homemakers, 13.3% musicians/artists, 6.6% teachers, 3% librarians, 20% retired, 3% students, 10% nurses, and 23% listed no occupation.

1. Where do you live? __ Within city limits of Gainesville ___ 1-3 miles ___ 4-6 miles ___ 7-9 miles ___ 10-15 miles Other ______

ANSWER 1. Seven (23.9%) participants of this research resided outside a twenty-five mile radius of the 34th Street Wall. Ten percent lived within the city limits of Gainesville and the remainder lived in Alachua County: 13.3% lived within three miles; 20% within 4-6 miles; 10% within 10-15 miles; and 23.9% over twenty five miles away.

2. How often do you drive, bicycle, or walk on 34th Street? (Circle one) ___ 1-2 times a day ___ more than 3 times a day ___ once a week ___ once a month ___ never

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ANSWER 2. The 34th Street corridor is a main thoroughfare and has a dense traffic pattern. Eighteen subjects (60%) passed by The Wall once a week and noted they looked at it every time they did so. Ten (30%) noted they passed by once a month and surprisingly two (6%) did so 1-2 times per day.

3. If you drive down 34th Street, do you look at the graffiti art on The Wall? ___ every time ___ often ___ seldom ___ never

ANSWER 3. Asked if they drove down 34th Street, did they look at the graffiti, eighteen (60%) replied every time; eight (26.6%) often; and four (13.3%) seldom.

4. Do you “go out of your way” to see The Wall? ___ very often ___ often ___ seldom ___ never

ANSWER 4. When asked if they “go out of your way” to see The Wall fourteen (46%) replied never, ten (30%) seldom, and six (20%) often.

5. Have you ever had a traffic accident or been involved in an accident while traveling on 34th Street in front of The Wall?

ANSWER 5. When asked if they had ever had an accident while traveling on 34th Street adjacent to the graffiti: twenty-eight (93.3%) replied no; and two (6.6%) yes. The local news media have, at times, alluded to the possible dangers generated by the distraction of the

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painting of the graffiti to drivers passing by. Traffic reports have not quantified such occurrences.

6. What is the most offensive graffiti message you have seen on The Wall?

political state message ______

religious state message ______

obscene state message ______

personal state message ______

death state message ______

other state message ______

Figure 51. Panel # 24, July 30,1999.

ANSWER 6. The most reaction to the content offensive messages painted on The Wall was generated by the WE REMEMBER panel. Thirty percent (10) found the perceived denigration of the panel to be offensive and objected to one message written over it – People Die (Figure 52). Six (20%) replied the word “fuck” was obscene. Two (6.6%) found “Bush sucks” offensive.

7. What is the most inspiring message you have seen on the Wall?

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ANSWER 7. Six (20%) found the panel WE REMEMBER the most inspiring message on The Wall while fourteen (46%) do not even read the messages. The message ABORTION IS MURDER inspired two (6.6%).

8. Have you ever painted on The Wall? ___ 1 time ___ 2 times ___ 3 times other ______

ANSWER 8. Only two (6.6%) subjects surveyed had painted one time and two (6.6%) had painted twice on The Wall. Twenty-six (86%) subjects surveyed had never painted on The Wall.

9. Have other members of your family painted on The Wall? ___ 1 time ___ 2 times ___ 3 times other ______

Friends? ___ 1 time ___ 2 times ___ 3 times other ______

ANSWER 9. Twenty-eight (93%) noted that no members of their families had painted on it either. Two (6.6%) said their friends had painted “too many times to count” on The Wall and four (13.3%) said their friends had painted twice. Twenty-four (80%) reported none of their friends had ever written on The Wall.

10. Do you know the significance of the We Remember panel? Yes No

ANSWER 10. Fourteen (46%) reported they knew the significance of the WE REMEMBER panel. Four (13.3%) did not.

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11. Would it surprise you that the We Remember panel has been painted on The Wall for more than twelve years? ___ yes ___ no

ANSWER 11. Asked if they would be surprised the WE REMEMBER PANEL has remained on The Wall for more than ten years twenty-four (80%) replied no and six ((20%) yes.

12. Which messages would you prefer not to be on The Wall? ___ sports scores ___ birthday greetings ___ death notices ___ holiday messages ___ advertisements other ______

ANSWER 12. Messages seen on The Wall were sports scores – two (6.6%), birthday greetings – two (6.6%), death notices – four (13.3%), holiday message – two (6.6%), advertisement – ten (33.3%), obscene – two (6.6%), religion – two (6.6%), and none – four (13.3%).

13. Whom do you think paints on The Wall? (choose as many as applys) ___ serious students ___ males ___ “party” students ___ females ___ juvenile delinquents ___ locals ___ gang members ___ visitors ___ want-to-be-artists ___ teenagers ___ serious artists ___ adults ___ psychotics

ANSWER 13. There was a wide latitude of profiles which the subjects thought the writers on The Wall could be placed: serious students – ten (33.3%), “party” students – twenty (66%), juvenile delinquents – eight (26.6%), gang members – two (6.6%), want-to-be-artists – eighteen (60%), serious artists – eight (26.6%), males – twenty-eight (93.3%), females – twenty (66%), locals – fourteen (46%), visitors – two (66%), teenagers – twenty (66%), adults – eight

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(26.6%), and psychotics – four (13.3%). These percentages reflect the participant’s selection of more than one category in which to place a writer. This survey has demonstrated that viewers from a rather wide local area see The Wall often, but will not drive out of their way to see it. The We Remember panel attracted the most interest while the majority of other panels were of no particularly interest. Most surveyed understood the meaning of the We Remember panel but were surprised it has been on The Wall in excess of ten years. Most perceived denigration of this panel to be offensive. The majority of participants, their relatives, or friends had not painted on The Wall. The painters of The Wall were thought to be mainly juvenile males, party students, want-to-be and serious artists while few thought writers were gang members.

Figure 52. Jake Fuller cartoon (The Gainesville Sun, 12 December 2001, p. 8A).

Jake Fuller’s cartoon (Figure 52) in the local newspaper is an example of the timelessness of local interest in The Wall. Fuller seemed to imply The 34th Street Wall graffiti artist is a carefree lackadaisical student splashing paint on The Wall. In actuality the

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artists seem to have approached the activity with a precise determination to express themselves through their art. Both the graffiti artists and this cartoonist challenge the viewers to hold up a mirror and closely examine themselves.

CONCLUSIONS

The 34th Street Wall it has been continuously painted since 1990. The graffiti art have been met by a wide range of reactions, ranging from supportive acceptance to hostile disagreement. Local reaction to Nazism, Neo-Nazism, and their accompanying political symbols such as the swastika has been rather swift and intense. The swastika1 is one of the more visible and widely used images in the world. The depiction may vary according to whether the “arms” are pointed in a clockwise or counter-clockwise position. The interpretation varies widely from ancient China, to Tibet, India, Scandinavia, Peru and modern Germany. The swastika has been interpreted within a wide range of contexts from the symbol of Buddha’s heart to the symbol of the Nazi Party. The swastika has been painted on The Wall many times, usually as a write-over. The adverse reaction appears to be more vocal, usually the same kind of overt physical reaction that defined the 1960s. Public reaction usually begins with an individual or individuals physically altering the offending material by painting over it or making revisions and additions in accordance with their own beliefs - a socially self-governing system. These beliefs may or may not be the predominate opinion of the locals, but the input from the local media often fosters the impression the initial message represented a minority fringe element. One wonders how the local news media seem to be present, with cameras rolling, when the reactive alteration occurs. The radical activism of the 1960s seems to be absent on The Wall. An occasional panel decried war, opposed abortion and drugs, or championed women’s rights. There were occasional panels by vegetarians (Figure 45). Panels were painted bemoaning over-extended credit cards (Figure 46) and praising local athletic coaches, especially football. Active duty military service members, returning and not returning, were honored. The radicals of counter-cultures have not been as vocal as in the 1960s, or they may still be, but it has not been as avidly reported by the news media as it was then. A wave of national and local patriotism seems to have developed as a result of the destruction of The Towers in New

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York City and the attack on the Pentagon in Washington, DC. This was akin to the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor in the 1940s. Two panels, ROTC and POW-MIA (Figure 39), have been painted on The 34th Street Wall during the same week each year. No apparent negative reactions have been noted. Panels with political messages appear to not provoke negative responses. The overt rejection of the military complex and disdain for national patriotism existed during the Vietnam War Era, 1960- 1975, (Battlefield Vietnam, 2004) continues, but not as loudly or destructively. The unification of public sentiment against terrorism, foreign and domestic, appears to have an effect on The Wall’s military panels, which were eventually painted over, but were not marked over with derogatory graffiti. The reactions to murals appear to mirror that published by the news media. The hippies, dissidents, skinheads, and neo-Nazi now are delegated to the fringe element, not that they are not present and heard from occasionally. Murals are primarily intended for the community that lives with them. With the expanded definition of community the interpretation and analysis has become more problematic. Many factors appear to influence both interpretation and analysis. Cockcroft et al (1987) reported, “it is important that the muralist live in or have some strong bond to the community, not just parachuted in to do good for the supposedly artless Other” (p. xi). The relationship between the viewer and the graffiti artist ranges from empowerment to indifference; empowering because a connection had been achieved, indifferent because no connection was achieved. A relationship results in either empowerment or indifference, not both. A mural (Figure 44) that garners universal community approval is deemed by some to be a bland failure. Controversy encourages a critical look at place, process, and product possibly initiating new dialogue that encourages a vitalization of issues and new images. But for the most part, murals aren’t about courage and controversy (Figure 38). Finding a mural subject that the community will agree on and hopefully not tamper with is a selective process that requires the selection to be sensitive to many viewpoints. Mural artists often are not out to shock people, and some have lofty ideas about what these murals mean (Rochford, 1993). The murals (Figure 40) then function as a challenge and support of values and traditions, inspiration, and information. In 2001 Rachael Brown, a student, provided another viewpoint,

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I believe that the 34th Street wall [sic] should be left alone. It provides an important outlet for many young people in our community. It is also really neat to see the wall in an ever-changing state, representing what is going on at the core of our little city. (p. 8 B)

The murals on The 34th Street Wall are public art, not because they are out of doors, but because they are the result of art activities and strategies using the public as the subject. A momentary glance at an image while driving down the street may provide a lasting imprint on the brain, an imprint filed away for later recall and possibly analysis. The length of stay for a mural on The Wall is transitory. The 34th Street Wall positions us in time, history, and place by portraying our ideas, traditions, and issues. Wall paintings have existed throughout the world beginning with the earliest evidence of humans. They serve as a format to say, “I exist” and as a community mirror through which a community or an individual can view (Figure 49) his own particular reality. The murals also provide a window through which outsiders have access to the values generated by that culture. Jacobson’s study refuted literature that states graffiti artists are untrained. Jacobson (1996) considers Hip-Hop painters as artists, the others as just “scribblers.” His survey found 42% had artists in their family and “generally they were planning to choose an artistic profession” (p. 3). The artists painting on The Wall appeared to be serious about their work. One of these artists was Gabe Lacktman, an architectural student at Florida International University. He arrived at The Wall with a rather large supply of paint and a bulging sketchbook. He did this on numerous occasions. Hip-Hop graffiti are usually a group effort and ranges from stick figures to well executed portraits. Groups of artists (Figure 36) usually make huge paintings. “The graffiti artist is the last breed of artist, the one that has made a cyclical return to what was the advent of visual creation, the cave artists. The graffiti artists are the urban shamans and the streets are our modern day cave” (Element, 2002, p. 4). Analyzing the visual evidence collected from The 34th Street Wall produced varied results. The predominant genre (Table 2) was Hip-Hop (21,71%), the predominant color (Table 3) was white (67%), over 99% of the images covered one or less panels (Table 4), and more than

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99% of the images remained less than two weeks (Table 5). The images painted on The 34th Street Wall were constantly in transition. With the development of home-owned digital cameras, laser printers, scanners, and computers, selected images from murals are easily reproduced, framed, and hung on any viewer’s wall. This rapid reproduction of images has made it possible for the average citizen to own the image of a mural. So much so that laws have been enacted to protect the work of artists. Courtney Harris reported 2001 was the second year in which artists organized to paint on The 34th Street Wall. Harris (2001), stated, “Any graffiti artist could apply online to have, for free, one of 50 spots on the half-mile wall” (p. 3B). My research has not uncovered the date of this first organized painting of The Wall. The online site Art Crimes: Graffiti Shows and Events 2000 (http://www.org/index/history2000.html) lists The Wall as “Beyond Extreme Graffiti Festival 2000 - Miracle on 34th Street. Location: 34th Street, When: During Gator Growl” (p. 8). This 45-page site contains announcements from over twenty foreign countries. The Wall has been included in additional sites online by individual graffiti artists such as Daim. During the analysis of The 34th Street Wall murals, certain Hip-Hop images (Figure 34, 35) were so similar they appeared to be the work of a single artist. These murals may well be defined as art, but as a new form, a separate, independent art form. They appear to be the result of combining diverse elements of our culture. Modern humans, like early humans, continue to have the need to symbolize, to create meanings, and to search for meanings in their world. It may also be what Rahn (2002) labels “urban expression and artistic attempt to change public space” (p. 170). It has been my experience that the muralist of The 34th Street Wall is a known entity, the kid next door, and a classmate. The graffiti artist is approachable. We see them painting on The Wall with paint on their hands, on their clothing, and in their hair. The graffiti artist has taken the unknown, the mysterious quality from the making of art. The demystification results in familiarity. The artist is now like us. We are on a par with the artist. We now have an investment in the art; we are part owner of the art. Modern graffiti are still about words and writing words on surfaces. Graffiti are one of the few movements that include people from all backgrounds, with one goal in mind. The graffiti artists painting on The Wall have only themselves to please. I see no lines of investors to purchase their artistic effort. The artist satisfies their inner drive to create. It is left to

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the art critic, the historian to attempt to decipher, analyze, and come to conclusions about the art. Often artists are unable to explain their art. How does one verbalize the essence of their inner creative energy? Phillips (1999) reported that most graffiti artists said when they began graffiti it was more about the thrill of the act than anything else. Searching for a tribal identity they found it in the communal activities of Hip-Hop. As time passed their experience was changed because they became more aware of the issues that transformed their experience. Different sources encouraged them to learn from others and begin to feel a part of something and to make a contribution. Graffiti art may be defined in many ways - as the basic component for defining ourselves as humans, as a means to define our differing cultures, as a mirror into ourselves, and as an open window through which we observe others. The birthday greeting to Adolph Hitler (Figure 48) painted on The Wall in 1999 evoked the anger of a local 59-year-old schoolteacher. At age nine she emigrated from West Berlin to the United States. She expressed her satisfaction painting over the salute to Hitler's birthday. Arndorfer (1999) quoted her reaction,

Every stroke of the brush gave me some satisfaction. . . . I feel like throwing some tomatoes at it to express my utter disgust. . . . I'm sure I'm not the only German in town, and everybody else would feel the same way. The younger generation has no idea what the Nazi period means to us. . . . I feel as a German I should do something good, to let people know there are good Germans, too. . . . You can see that after more than 50 years, you still have this feeling of contempt that you can't get rid of . . . . I wanted to spray over the whole thing, but then I thought this would be better. I wanted the guy who spray-painted it to know I understood what he wrote (p. 1B).

The Gainesville Sun (1999) printed one reaction from a local citizen, "I know this country is built on freedom of speech, but there is a limit. Public, written birthday salutations to Hitler is akin to yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater. Thank you again, Conradt, for your brave action" (p. 3C).

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The majority of viewers function on the belief that art should tell a story. Hip-Hop does not tell a story. Instead it does tell a story with words or in conjunction with images. These images may have different meanings for different people. Each drawing is a message in itself, a means of communication at different levels. I believe graffiti, as documented on The Wall, are an art form, not mindless scribbling on a large surface. The ultimate decision has possibly been made for us when art auction houses and galleries include selected images from graffiti murals in their inventories. Within the documented images in this brief investigation numerous images have captured the attention of a wide variety of viewers and the news media, local and international. But does it belong in a museum? With the changing of art also comes the changing of the definition of a museum. The closed-space traditional museum has been defined by Burcaw (1997) as, "an institution existing to collect objects, maintain permanent collections, and base its educational work on these collections" (p. 18). Generally concurring with this definition are George Brown Goode (1895), the International Council of Museums (1956), Douglas Allen (1960), the American Association of Museums (1962), and Germain Bazin (1967). But Eilean Hooper-Greenhill (1977) departs radically from this traditional definition of a museum: "today, almost anything may turn out to be a museum. . . . The experience of going to a museum is often closer to that of going to a theme park or a funfair than that which used to be offered by the austere, glass-case museum" (p. 1). Hooper-Greenhill further stated it is a mistake to think there is "one form of reality" (p. 1) for museums. Historically, museums have changed many times to accommodate changes in power, and social, economic, and political institutions. Collections of objects have been kept in cabinets (cabinet in which a collection of precious objects were kept ca. 18th and 18th century), private homes, palaces, world fair exhibitions, and neoclassical buildings specifically constructed as museums. There has been no essential museum direct line of descent. Carol Stapp (2000) reported that a 1990s analyst from outside the museum field predicted future changes would "influence the museum at its very core" (p. 20). No century in recorded history has experienced as many social changes and such radical changes as the twentieth century: changes which affected museums. Many museums have designed impressive three-dimensional museum sites on the Web, complete with graphics and interactive storytelling. Through the computer, visitors can now tour exhibitions and browse

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collections. David Anderson (2000) observed, "one exciting aspect of the evolving museum field is that museums, too, are listening. And as they listen, they are noticing a change in the voices from both within and outside museum alls. From within they hear about things visitors expect to see, hear, and do; they hear about how visitors learn. From outside, they hear about changing expectation, roles, and responsibilities as the climate, complexion, and structure of communities change" (p. 37) Museums help define our collective culture, and in order to survive for the long haul must periodically reinvent themselves. Expanding the traditional definition of the museum to include the open-air museum without walls, i.e. The 34th Street Wall, may be viewed not as change but inclusion. The 34th Street murals may be compared to cave drawings, enabling the viewer an insight into who lived here and their values. Historically, much of our knowledge is what we have learned from the past. The making of this art is about the human condition.

IMPLICATIONS

Dissanayake (1992) observed that individuals within given culture learn the rules of expression within that culture. This learning is usually on a subconscious level occurring outside the parameters of formal educational. It would probably be difficult to remember how one learned the existing rules by which a specific image is defined within that culture. Does one remember when, where, or how they learned the rules of representation for images within their society? If too many of these rules are altered, the viewer may not be able to recognize the image or misinterprets the representation altogether. One such image may be the Coca Cola logo. This image is readily recognized as long as the flowing, curving Arabic letters appear in the image, be it English, Spanish, French, or Italian. But when the language is Sino-Tibetan or Sanskrit the rules of depiction are vastly changed and the viewer may not recognize or correctly interpret the representation. This research has encompassed the collection of data from one specific site over an extended period of time in lieu of a wide geographical area, a narrow specific time-frame, or a concentration on specific artists. Perhaps future researchers will find it of use for what Jane Gadsby has labeled the Sociolinguistic Approach – examining the material completely but indirectly and selective looking. Gadsby (1995) wrote,

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This entails taking an event (such a the writing of a graffito) and then working outwards to incorporate other events, cultural facts, local customs, and anything that would have influenced the written graffito. It is only in this way that researchers can really come close to understanding events, cultural facts, local customs, and anything that would have influenced the written graffito. It is only in this way that researchers can really come close to understanding since in most cases we have no access to the minds of these people (p. 8).

EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS

Teachers need to introduce art to every student and explain art and how that art is a necessity in our lives. It provides an avenue through which ideas and emotions may be expressed providing a language and translation between cultures. The differences between cultures may be threatening to students. Hip-Hop art facilitates a common language used by the youth culture and supplies a basic foundation for students to understand other cultures and to learn from each other. Having students research their own family origins may encourage students to ask their parents, grandparents, and other relatives about their own heritage. Sharing this information with other students through their art fosters an atmosphere of learning and understanding. Exposure to a wide range of Hip-Hop art provides images from which to build their artistic vocabulary. These images may be rendered on paper, cardboard, canvas, wood, or large pieces of tree bark. Students are continually exposed to a plethora of graffiti art in magazines, on television, on the World Wide Web, and on all manner of textiles and clothing. This exposure may also encourage their involvement in the community. Educators need to value popular culture in order for there to be an exchange of knowledge from outside the classroom. This encourages students to become active participants in a dialogue with their teachers and peers. It enables the student to become active in the creation of ideas instead of a passive recipient of an arsenal of information. Hip-Hop graffiti has the potential to bring youth together from across race, gender, and socioeconomic boundaries. Local artists engaged in the production of murals are to be found in most urban areas. They usually provide an eager pool of individuals ready to share information related to future

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career paths. This provides an attractive and interesting venue for students to learn how to research, interview people in art, evaluate the wide scope of art vocations, and explore how the art world functions. This prepares students for life during and after the traditional school years. Understanding and learning about the art and history of the people with whom we have daily contact should help in overcoming our stereotypical conceptions. Art stimulates social change and empowers those “on the outside looking in” by supplying a positive identity and respect. It enables them to shout “Look At Me,” “I Am Here To Stay.” It validates Malraux (1953) “All art is a revolt against man’s fate” (p. 639). This study recorded the graffiti art on one specific site in Gainesville, Florida, over a twenty-six-month period, 1998-2000. This data has provided information by which contemporary American graffiti art may be evaluated and better understood. This site specific multidimensional approach may also provide data with which to compare future research, including graffiti art’s relationship with other current art forms. The scope of investigation for this research should not be limited in its geographical scope or time-frame, but brevity dictates a narrowing of these parameters.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

The scope of future research made possible by the murals on The 34th Street Wall, Gainesville, Florida, is limited only by the imagination and work ethic of the researcher. One glaring area for future research is an obvious need for homogenized nomenclature specific to Hip-Hop Graffiti Art. A wide variety of terms and definitions exist among the many writers of books, magazines, and the World Wide Web. Research of this type would probably require an almost new language for the description, analysis, and criticism of Graffiti Art. The Sanders-Bustle (2005) summary is most appropriate,

Today's world is an integrated world where information is no longer confined to traditional knowledge structures. Instead, information moves quickly from one area to another, crossing diverse cultures, while blurring boundaries between representations. Contemporary technological advances have significantly impacted the ways learners process and synthesize

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information while shifting attention away from how much information one retains to how one shapes and then uses information. An integrated approach to teaching and learning makes sense (p. 1).

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APPENDIX A

State of Florida Laws Covering Graffiti

Statutes & Constitution :View Statutes : flsenate.gov Page 1 of 2

Select Year: 11998 - i

The 1998 Florida Statutes Titte XLVI Chapter 806 View Entire Chapter

CRIMES Arson And Criminal Mischief

806.13 Criminal mischief; penalties; penalty for minor.-

(1)(a) A person commits the offense of criminal mischief if he or she willfully and maliciously injures or damages by any means any real or personal property belonging to another, including, but not limited to, the placement of graffiti thereon or other acts of vandalism thereto.

(b)1. If the damage to such property is $200 or less, it is a misdemeanor of the second degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083.

2. If the damage to such property is greater than $200 but less than $1,000, it is a misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083.

3. If the damage is $1,000 or greater, or if there is interruption or impairment of a business operation or public communication, transportation, supply of water, gas or power, or other public service which costs $1,000 or more in labor and supplies to restore, it is a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.

4. If the person has one or more previous convictions for violating this subsection, the offense under subparagraph 1. or subparagraph 2. for which the person is charged shall be reclassified as a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.

(2) Any person who willfully and maliciously defaces, injures, or damages by any means any church, synagogue, mosque, or other place of worship, or any religious article contained therein, is guilty of a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084, if the damage to the property is greater than $200.

(3) Whoever, without the consent of the owner thereof, willfully destroys or substantially damages any public telephone, or telephone cables, wires, fixtures, antennas, amplifiers, or any other apparatus, equipment, or appliances, which destruction or damage renders a public telephone inoperative or which opens the body of a public telephone, is guilty of a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084; provided, however, that a conspicuous notice of the provisions of this subsection and the penalties provided is posted on or near the destroyed or damaged instrument and visible to the public at the time of the commission of the offense.

(4)(a) The amounts of value of damage to property owned by separate persons, if the property was damaged during one scheme or course or conduct, may be aggregated in determining the grade of the offense under this section.

(b) Any person who violates this section may, in addition to any other criminal penalty, be required to pay for the damages caused by such offense.

(5) In addition to any other penalty provided by law, if a minor is found to have committed a delinquent act under this section for placing graffiti on any public property or private property, and: 126

(a) The minor is eligible by reason of age for a driver's license or driving privilege, the court shall

Ch. 98-93 LAWS OF FLORIDA Ch. 98-93 (7) Because of the difficulty of confronting the blight of graffiti, it is the intent of the Legislature that municipalities and counties not be preempted by state law from establishing ordinances that prohibit the marking of graffiti or other graffiti-related offenses Furthermore as related to graffiti such municipalities and counties are not preempted by state law from establishing higher penalties than those provided by state law and mandatory penalties when state law provides discretionary penalties. Such higher and mandatory penalties include fines that do not exceed the amount specified in ss 125.69 and 162.21, community service restitution, and forfeiture. Upon a finding that a juvenile has violated a graffiti-related ordinance, a court acting under chapter 985 may not provide a disposition of the case which is less severe than any mandatory penalty prescribed by municipal or county ordinance for such violation. Section 2. Subsection (7) of section 901.15, Florida Statutes, is amended to read: 901.15 When arrest by officer without warrant is lawful.-A law enforcement officer may arrest a person without a warrant when: (7) There is probable cause to believe that the person has committed: (a) An act of domestic violence as defined in s. 741.28:: (b) Child abuse, as defined in s. 827.04(2) and (3)=-" (c) Any battery upon another person, as defined in s. 784.03. (d) An act of criminal mischief or a graffiti-related offense as described in s. 806.13.

With respect to an arrest for an act of domestic violence, the decision to arrest shall not require consent of the victim or consideration of the relationship of the parties. It is the public policy of this state to strongly discourage arrest and charges of both parties for domestic violence on each other and to encourage training of law enforcement and prosecutors in this area. A law enforcement officer who acts in good faith and exercises due care in making an arrest under this subsection. under s. 741.31(4) or s. 784.047, or pursuant to a foreign order of protection accorded full faith and credit pursuant to s. 741.315. is immune from civil liabilit_v that otherwise might result by reason of his or her action. Section 3. This act shall take effect October l. 1998.

Became a law without the Governor's approval May 22. 1998. Filed in Office

Secretary of State May 21, 1998.

Z CODING: Words strUe+} are deletions: words underlined are additions.

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APPENDIX B

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APPENDIX C

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END NOTES

1 “The fylfot, or swastika, is of great antiquity and is common to many countries. It was the monogram of Vishnu and Siva in India, the battle-axe of Thor in Scandinavian inscriptions, and a favourite [sic] symbol with the Peruvians. In China and Japan it would appear to be a Buddhist importation, though it may possibly be a variation of the meander. . . . This emblem is to be seen on the wrappers of parcels, on the stomach or chest of idols, on the eaves of houses, on embroidery, and many other objects. It has its crampons directed towards the right, but another form . . . called Sauvastika [sic], is directed to the left. The former is said to be the first of the 65 auspicious signs of the footprint of Buddha, and the latter the fourth. It is said by some authorities to have been impressed by each toe of Buddha. Sometimes these two impressions are represented by flowers or flames. The term Swastika, or Svastika, is derived from the Sanskrit su ‘well’ and as ‘to be,’ meaning ‘so be it,’ and denoting resignation of spirit. It is described as ‘ten thousand character sign,’ Wan Tsŭ . . . and is said to have come from Heaven. . . . It is also regarded as the symbol or seal of Buddha’s heart . . . is usually placed on the heart of SHAKYAMUNI BUDDHA [sic] in images or pictures of that divinity, as it is believed to contain within it the whole mind of Buddha. It appears as an ornament on the crowns of the Bonpa and Lama deities of Thibet [sic] . . . the Swaswtika [sic] represents the ‘fire’s cradle,’ i.e., the pith of the wood, from which in oldest times in the point of intersection of the two arms the fire produced by whirling round an inserted stick . . . it simply symbolizes the twirling movement when making the fire” (Outlines of Chinese Symbolism & Art Motives, 1931/1976, pp. 381-2).

2 “The Eight Diagrams, are represented by an arrangement of certain cabalistic signs consisting of various combinations of straight lines arranged in a circle, said to have

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been evolved from the markings on the shell of a tortoise by the legendary Emperor Fu Hsi . . . 2852 B.C. They are also said to have been created from the two primary forms . . . represented by a continuous straight line . . . called Yang I . . . or the symbol of the male principle, and a broken line . . . called Yin I . . . or the symbol of the female principle (vide Yin and Yang). Mathematics was said to have derived from the Eight Diagrams, which figuratively denote the evolution of nature and its cyclic changes. . . . A plaque . . . considered to have the power of preserving the wearer from misfortune, and assuring his future prosperity. It may also be nailed over a house door as an emblem of felicity ” (Williams, 1975, pp. 148-151)

3 Diam is pronounced like dime, the coin. He was the co-founder of TCD, Trash- Can-Design. He is a member of SUK, GBF, New York’s FX crew and ES. In 1989 starts writing CAZA together with DUKE and KEWEN; in 1992 starts writing DAIM; in 1993 wins the HVV/WEST graffiti contest with HESH, resulting in the designing of two buses for the city of Hamburg where he painted the first bent letters without an outline; in 1995 he paints the highest graffiti in the world together with DARCO, HESH, LOOMIT, OHNE, AND VAINE; and enters the Guinness Book of Records. He has traveled in and painted murals in Denmark, France, Switzerland, Norway, Croatia, Greece, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Canada, and the USA – including the 34th Street wall in Gainesville, Florida (Daim 2002).

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

EDUCATION

2000 Doctoral Candidate, Art Education, College of Visual Arts and Dance, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL. 2000 Museum Studies Graduate Certificate, Art Education, College of Visual Arts and Dance, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL. 1994 Master of Fine Arts (Ceramic Sculpture), College of Fine Arts, Department of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL. 1986 Bachelor of Arts (Asian Studies). College of Liberal arts and Sciences, Interdepartmental Program of Asian Studies (China), University of Florida, Gainesville, FL. 1984 Bachelor of Fine Arts (Ceramics), College of Fine Arts, Department of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL. 1952-55 Registered Nurse, St. Luke’s Hospital School of Nursing, St. Luke’s Hospital, Jacksonville, FL.

INTERNATIONAL STUDY

2002 International Symposium on Ancient Ceramics – Its Scientific and Technological Insights, Shanghai, China. Two-week tour of ancient kiln sites (Fanchang, Jixi, and Shexian, Anhui Province). 2000 Florida State University International Museum Education Studies. London, England. Two months in English and French museums. International Symposium on Ancient Ceramics – Its Scientific and

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Technological Insights, Shanghai, China. Two-week tour of ancient kiln sites (Hanzhou, Cixi, and Yuyao). 1995 International Symposium on Ancient Ceramics – Its Scientific and Technological Insights, Shanghai, China. Two-week tour of ancient kiln sites (Xian, Yaozhou, Xingping, and Banpo). 1995 First Yaozhou Kiln Symposium – Tongchuan, China. 1992 International Symposium on Ancient Ceramics – Its Scientific and Technological Insights, Shanghai, China. Two-week tour of ancient kiln sites (Yixing, Nanjing, Yangzhou, Zhenjiang, Banpo, Xian, and Jingdezhen). 1989 Visiting Scholar to Japan. Three weeks. University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois and Japan (Honshu, and Shikoku). 1988 Foshan Pottery factory workshop. Four days, Foshan, Guandong Province, Peoples Republic of China. 1988 He Zhou Huan, Sculptor. Private instruction. Three months. Guanzhou Hiatang University, Guandong Province, Peoples Republic of China. 1987-88 Lin Xiao Lun, Traditional Chinese Painting. Southern University, Shipai, Guangzhou, Guandong Province, Peoples Republic of China. Lin Yu Yuan, Chinese Calligraphy. South China Normal University, Shipai, Guangzhou, Guandong Province, Peoples Republic of China. 1987 Thancoopie, female aboriginal potter. One week. Trinity Beach, Queensland, Australia. Leslie McLennan, Potter. Three days. Otago, New Zealand. 1986 Gary Roberts, Jam Factory Craft Center. Two days. Melbourne, Queensland, Australia. 1975 -78 Aquilino Budãno, Jr. Mold making, slip casting, underglaze, lustres, and ceramic design. Subic Bay, Luzon, Republic of the Philippines. 1976 Taiwan Pottery Arts Factory. Underglaze and ceramic design. One week. Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China. 1960-64 Madam Lebar. Oil painting. Kenitra, Morocco. AWARDS – HONORS 2005 Chancellor's List

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1997 Who’s Who of American Women. 1985 Cum Laude, College of Fine Arts, University of Florida. 1966 Recipient Federal Traineeship for Nursing. 1963 Recipient, Florida State Scholarship for Nursing. 1955 Cum Laude, St. Luke’s Hospital School of Nursing. 1952 Recipient, Winn-Lovett Scholarship for Nursing. Recipient, Balfour Award, Outstanding Graduating Senior. Baldwin High School, Baldwin, FL.

PROFESSIONAL LICENSES AND MEMBERSHIP

Florida Association of Museums. American Association of Museums. National Art Education Association. Phi Delta Kappa – International Educational Fraternity. Ancient Ceramic Research Organization. American Association of University Women. Florida Craftsmen. Asia Society. Registered Professional Nurse – Current Florida License.

TEACHING AND WORK EXPERIENCE

2004 Correspondent Docent Trainee for National Society Daughters of the American Revolution National Museum, Washington, DC. 1997 “Japanese Tea Ceremony and Accompanying Tea Ceramics” presented to Leon County Teacher’s Conference, Tallahassee, FL. 1996 “The Influence of Chinese Dark Glazed Wares on Japanese Tea Ceramics” presented to the Fourth Annual Conference on Chinese Studies – Florida China Linkage Institute, Florida International University, Melbourne, FL. 1995 Asian Ceramics taught to Museum Docent Program, Samuel P. Harn Museum

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of Art, Gainesville, FL. Asian Ceramics taught to University of Florida Advanced Ceramics Class serving as the Chinese Scholar for the Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, FL. 1994-97 Cataloging and researching fact sheets for Arthur Vining Collection of Asian Ceramics, Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, Fl. Researching ceramic trade patterns, Sino-American Research Team, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China. 1991 Calligraphy taught in private sessions. St. Augustine, FL. 1987-88 English taught as a Foreign Language. South China Normal University, Shipai, Guangzhou, Guandong Province, Peoples Republic of China. English Language Audio Tapes produced for Foreign Language Department, South China Normal University, Shipai, Guangzhou, Guandong Province, Peoples Republic of China. 1985-86 Research Assistant to Dr. C.C. Chennault, Assistant Professor Chinese Language and Literature, College of Liberal Arts ad Sciences, Interdepartmental Program of Asian Studies, University of Florida, Laboratory Assistant for Chemistry Department, Orlando Junior College, Orlando, FL. 1952-55 Year Book Artist. St. Luke’s Hospital School of Nursing, St. Luke’s Hospital, Jacksonville, FL.

PUBLICATIONS

2005 Chinese Ceramic Ware Exported to America in the Qing Dynasty. (To be published and presented in November). 2005 International Symposiun on Ancient Ceramics – Its Scientific and Technological Insights. Shanghai, China. Published in Chinese and English. Presented in English. 2002 Chinese Kendi Produced for the Southeast Asian Market. International Symposiun on Ancient Ceramics – Its Scientific and Technological Insights. Shanghai, China. Published in Chinese and English. Presented in English. 1999 Song Dynasty Funerary Jars. International Symposium on Ancient Ceramics

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Its Scientific and Technological Insights. Shanghai, China. Published in Chinese and English. Presented in English. 1998 Chinese Ink Stones. Second International Conference on South East Asian Calligraphy Education. University of Southern California, Irving, California. 1996 Chinese Brushpots. First International Conference on South East Asian Calligraphy Education. University of Maryland at College Park, College Park, MD. 1996 The Influence of Chinese Dark Glazed Ware on Japanese Tea Ceramics. International Symposium on Ancient Ceramics – Its Scientific and Technological Insights. Shanghai, China. Published in Chinese and English. Presented in English Review of the 1995 International Symposium on Ancient Ceramics. ACRO Update, February 1996. Asian Ceramic Research Organization Quarterly Newsletter. Chicago, IL. Report on Ceramics Symposium in China. Florida Craftsmen News, 2. St. Petersburg, FL. 1994 Sican Portrait Vessel of Ancient Peru. International Symposium on Ancient Ceramics – Its Scientific and Technological Insights. Shanghai, China. Published in Chinese and English. Presented in English. 1992 Ancient China: Major Source and Inspiration for Japanese Raku. International Symposium on Ancient Ceramics – Its Scientific and Technological Insights. Shanghai, China. Published in Chinese and English. Presented in English 1975 The Final Irony. Manila: Capitol Printing. Genealogical History. 1971 Nichols Family in Virginia. Southern Genealogical Exchange Quarterly. 13 – 15.

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